Flickers of Freedom

The Causal Powers of Absences?

By now you might have heard of Tyron Goldschmidt's paper “A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences” in which he aims to do just that. In case you have yet to see it, the paper tries to do so by having nothing more than a title: the body of the paper is entirely lacking in text. 

The blank page appears to have had numerous causal effects, including that of causing a few written replies, which seems to demonstrate the point in question: namely, that the lack of written text, the absence of written words on the page, has the power to cause real change.    

I like Goldschmidt’s paper and, contrary to what Nathan Wildman and Neil McDonnell say here and in the comments here, I think Goldschmidt’s paper does, in fact, demonstrate the causal power of absences.

Nathan and Neil suggest that Goldschmidt’s paper fails to demonstrate the causal power of absences. Their reasoning is simple: they claim that there is no absence here, only an actual positive property had by the paper in question, namely, the property of having no body text.

Unfortunately, Nathan and Neil have offered little reason to think that (a) this property actually exists and (b) is positively had by the paper. Notice, they claim that the property in question is that of having no body text. But, we can also truthfully claim that the paper does not have body text: the descriptive claim ‘not having body text’ does not suggest that there is a positive property that actually exists and that is had by the paper. Compare (1) the paper has no body text, with (2) the paper does not have body text.  Arguably, the latter claim is made true by the very absence in question, i.e., the paper’s demonstrable absence of written text, not, pace Nathan and Neil, by its having of an actual positive property.  

However, and crucial for those interested in causal powers, the demonstrable absence of text does not produce the relevant effects by itself. The causal power of this absence of text results from the simultaneous operation of multiple causal powers that are working together to produce an effect. Specifically, in this context a paper that is absent any written text has the power to cause real change, due to that very absence, by working together with our collective expectations. In particular, it is by thwarting those very real expectations that the absence of text causes real change. But, again, it does not do so because it has the actual positive property of having no body text. It does so by not having body text within a context where blank pages thwart our expectations.

What Is Determinism?

I'm extremely honoured and pleased to be this month's Featured Author - thanks to Thomas for setting this up. I'm in the somewhat embarrassing position, though, of having to conduct my stint as Featured Author at a time at which I am not really thinking a great deal about free will or philosophy of action at all! - I'm currently embarked on an AHRC-funded project entitled 'Persons as Animals' which aims to look at ways in which various aspects of the philosophy of mind might be transformed if we were to take a bit more seriously the fact that we human beings are animals of a certain kind (rather than, say, computers, or brains, or souls). Agency is one of the strands of the project; the other two are cognition and perception. I'm currently working mainly on the perceptual strand and thinking about the sense of touch. But I know this won't be central to the interests of those on this blog - so for present purposes, I'm going to return to the free-will related questions I have been interested in most recently - which is the question how determinism should be defined for the purposes of those interested in the free will debate.

I am interested in the fact that the most frequently offered, currently accepted definitions of determinism are expressed by way of the concept of *entailment*. Here, for example, is a representative definition from John Fischer (I call it 'ED' for 'entailment definition'):

(ED) For any given time, a complete statement of the [nonrelational] facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time.

My question is: is this the right way to define determinism? I have begun to think that perhaps it is not. Entailment is essentially a relationship between propositions - whereas it seems to me that the expression of determinism might require a more properly metaphysical notion at its heart. AS an alternative to (ED), for example, we might consider:

(MD) The past (causally or physically) necessitates the future.

(ED) does not, I think, entail (MD). The quickest way to see why not is to consider what one would say about each thesis given a Ramsey-Lewis ('non-governing') conception of laws. Consider a world in which (ED) is true, but in which the laws are non-governing (where they are simply the things that figure as theorems or axioms in the deductive system that achieves the best combination of simplicity and strength). MD is not true in such a world. The laws are effectively mere descriptions of what generally happens in the 'just one little thing and then another' series of events that constitutes reality. There is no sense in which the past metaphysically necessitates the future - though (ED) remains true. This point is recognised, in effect, I think, by some prominent compatibilist thinkers - and indeed forms the basis of some of their compatibilist arguments. Beebee and Vihvelin, for instance, have both recognised this point rather clearly and have both suggested that this gives us a ready route to compatibilism about free will and determinism. Vihvelin, indeed, makes it clear at the outset of her recent book that she regards any embrace of a metaphysical style definition of determinism as confusing and misleading, insisting that “determinism should not be confused with the view of laws that has been called “the governing conception of laws”, “the pushy explainer view” and most commonly “the necessitarian view” (Vihvelin, p. 4).” It is easy, she says, to get confused, “because determinism is often formulated in a loose and misleading way, e.g. as the thesis that the facts about the past ‘metaphysically determine’ or ‘necessitate’ or ‘fix’ all future facts”. She recommends that these “loose ways of talking” be avoided. But my question is whether another response to the recognition might be preferable. For having recognised that the entailment definition can be satisfied when the metaphysical definition is not, ought we not to question whether the entailment definition really and truly captures what it was we thought we were worried about when we were worried, originally, about determinism? Does not the coming apart of the two definitions reveal, in fact, that the entailment definition is inadequate to capture the doctrine of determinism? That, in brief, is the line of thought on which I'd welcome your comments.

You Are Not an Event (Are You?)

Many accounts of the causation of overt intentional bodily actions assume that what happens when you are making your body move during an action must be explained in terms of causal relations among discrete *events*.  For example, many claim that the occurrence of a mental event non-deviantly causes the occurrence of the corresponding movements of the body.  Call this the “Event-Causal Assumption” (ECA). 

Given ECA, if you want your account of the causation of action to include a causal role for the agent in the production of her own bodily movements and actions, the typical occupant for that role is some mental event, such as a desire, belief, or intention.    

But this widespread assumption generates an equally familiar problem: if your causal role in generating your own bodily movements during an action is occupied by some mental event, there is nothing left for *you to do* with respect to those movements.  There is nothing left for you to do because all of the necessary causal work is accomplished via the relevant mental event.  This is one version of the “Problem of the Missing Agent”.

Here’s a three-step argument that purports to generate this conclusion:

(1) When you are performing an overt intentional bodily action, the movements of your body are non-deviantly caused by the occurrence of your mental events (ECA)

(2) There is no sense in which *you* are identical to any of your mental events, or to the entire set or collection of your mental events

 Thus,

(3) When you are performing an intentional bodily action, *you* are not playing any causal role in generating your own bodily movements during your performance of that action

If this argument is persuasive, for those many philosophers who tacitly or explicitly endorse some version of (ECA), how do you ensure that your account of the causation of action includes a causal role for the agent? 

I see two options: (a) you could embrace the implausible claim that you are identical to some mental event, or to the entire set or collection of your mental events; or (b) you could reject the commitment to (ECA) and find an alternative account of the causal role of the agent. 

So, should the defender of (ECA) bite the bullet and claim that you are an event?  Or should the metaphysical implausibility of that claim force the rejection of (ECA)?  Or is there some third option?

The P2P Hypothesis at Scientia Salon

Just a note that my essay, "The Peer-to-Peer Hypothesis and a New Theory of Free Will", is now up and open for discussion at Massimo Pigliucci's online philosophy magazine, Scientia Salon. Tough crowd over there, but fun to engage some non-philosophers with my work! 

Why Regress Arguments Fail

There is an old regress argument against the possibility of self-forming acts that implies that we are not ultimately responsible for (the consequences of) how we choose to act. This is the regress whereby one would have to choose what kind of chooser to become on some grounds, which would require having to be able to choose those grounds on some metagrounds, and so on, ad infinitum.

In one variant, Strawson (1998) summarizes this ‘basic argument’ as follows: (1) One acts (or reacts to input) in a particular manner because of one’s physical/mental organization (or character or nature). (2) If one is to be ultimately MR for what one does, one must be ultimately MR for one’s physical/mental organization. (3) But one cannot be ultimately responsible for one’s physical/mental organization at the time of making a choice, because, simply put, one is what one is when one makes a choice. To choose the physical/mental organization that leads to that same choice, permitting a different choice to be made, would be a case of causa sui (self-causation), which is logically impossible. (4) So one cannot help but choose as one does at each instant because one cannot choose what one is (the character or nature that one has) at each instant, and one therefore is not ultimately MR for anything that one does.

The impossibility of self-causation is a valid argument against the possibility of an ability to choose the present physical/mental organizational grounds for making a choice at the present instant. But it is not circularly causal for a present choice to alter the physical/mental organizational  grounds of future choices. Criterial causation gets around the impossibility of self-causation by having neurons alter the physical grounds, not of the present mental events they realize, but of potential future mental events. They accomplish this by triggering changes in the physically realized informational/physical criteria for firing that must be met by future neuronal inputs before future neuronal firing occurs that realizes future mental events. In the case of a self-forming choice, one does not choose or alter the physical organizational basis for making a present decision or choice about how to be, one chooses or alters the physical organizational basis for making future decisions.

Choices that follow from such ‘future self’ self-forming acts we will have willed to take place by virtue of having set up those particular criteria in advance. When those criteria are satisfied in the future, leading to some decision, action or choice, those criteria cannot be changed, but because criteria can be changed in advance, we are to an extent free to decide on the parameters defining how we will decide or behave in the future. Criterial causation therefore offers a path toward a degree of self-formation and a degree of ultimate MR, where the brain can determine how it will decide/behave given particular types of future input. Self-formation involves reparameterizing how our future selves will choose to act.

Implicit in such regress arguments is that an infinite stack of decisions would have to be made in an instant. But decisions do not happen in an instant. They are cybernetic processes that come to conclusions over durations. If I want to decide on guests to invite for dinner, I might deliberate, playing out different scenarios in my mental workspace. The process is cybernetic because it involves feedback and comparison with some criteria I am trying to fulfill. If I imagine two guests who I then realize have split up, I will experience an error signal, and replace one or both of them with someone else, and then play things out again.

Self-forming choices are also durational and cybernetic, involving feedback, comparison with optimal fulfillment, and error signals. For example, say I have been fighting with my wife. After deliberating, I conclude that I am in part to blame because of how I react to her comments about, say, me working too much. I decide that, henceforth I will not respond in an angry way. I have set up grounds not for that decision, but for future decisions. Next time she makes a comment I might feel myself getting angry or defensive. But because I have preset new grounds by reparameterizing myself, there can be an error signal that indicates to me that I am heading towards a violation of these reformed grounds for my deciding. I correct myself, suppress my kneejerk anger, and respond in a way consistent with the reformed or reparameterized self I chose. I might say ‘you are right, I will come home earlier.’ I can then reparameterize myself to decide to come home earlier in the future. Days later, stressing out at work at 6PM about some grant deadline, I can feel an error signal or conflict between wanting to stay and my promise to get home. Whether I decide to honor my promise or not, I am beginning to develop a new character because I now feel torn, whereas previously I worked late without even thinking about it or its consequences.

If self-forming decisions about future choosing are not instantaneous, but rather cybernetic processes, then we can, as demanded by type 2 LFW, bootstrap ourselves over time into new characters. We might envision overcoming alcoholism, bind ourselves in various ways (e.g. reparameterize ourselves by swearing not to drink, reparameterize our world by throwing out all alcoholic drinks, joining AA etc.) such that when we feel the urge in the future, we are less likely to succumb. Months later we might have a new non-alcoholic character. The fact that there are millions of recovered alcoholics is testament to the human capacity to reform character.

Such bootstrapping might give rise to ‘Sorites worries.’ These are the ancient Greek heap arguments: A grain of sand is not a heap; Adding another grain does not make it a heap; On that logic, a million grains is also not a heap. But at that stage it patently is a heap. Similarly, a small act of future-self-reparameterization is not an entirely new character, and so on. And yet, after beating alcoholism or workaholism via the cumulative effects of thousands of small self-forming decisions, one patently does have a reformed character. Why do such heap arguments fail? Because the definitions of ‘heap’ or ‘character’ are criterial and therefore fuzzy. They set conditions on amounts or degrees of certain traits, not number.  

Of course we are not utterly free in making our choices because we cannot choose some of the initial bases of our choices. For example, what smells good or disgusting is just dictated to us by the inherited organization of our nervous system. We are not free to determine our initial conditions, since we have to start with some innate criteria at birth.  However, although we cannot choose what smells good, we can choose what we eat, because that decision can be made in light of criteria that we set on the basis of reason, before we smell anything delicious. For example, say a woman love’s the smell of cooked meat, and has a first-order desire for it. But based on her second-order desire not to hurt animals, and her reasoned conclusion that it is immoral to do so, she can set up criteria for deciding what to eat in the future, such that when she smells roasted meat she will decide not to eat it, but something vegetarian instead.  

A person can be responsible both for setting up the kind of criteria that would lead to certain kinds of future actions/choices and also for failing to inhibit criterial satisfaction (i.e., block the passing of the critical threshold) on the basis of higher-order criteria about what counts as right and wrong, through, for example, inhibition from executive centers in the frontal lobe. Consider the blameworthiness of a policeman who shoots and kills an unarmed citizen. On this account, he would not be responsible for pulling the trigger at the moment criteria for firing are passed, leading to a motor command to pull the trigger; instead he is responsible for (a) having certain decision criteria in place that he in part voluntarily placed there or did not voluntarily challenge when he could have, and (b) for failing to inhibit criterial satisfaction on the basis of knowledge of what is right and wrong, in the moments before the criteria were satisfied that led to him pulling the trigger. In a moral sense, the crime was not committed at the instant he pulled the trigger, but moments (or even longer spans of time) before that, by his having made decisions to put criteria in place or having failed to make decisions to train his nervous system to inhibit criterial satisfaction, which then led him to have the kind of nervous system that would lead him to pull the trigger under circumstances like those where he did pull the trigger, killing yet another unarmed citizen in America.

Onward and Upward with Downward Causation

Accounts of free will that require supernatural or contra-causal interventions have given libertarianism a bad name, and violate basic assumptions of physicalism and science. For any naturalistic variant of LFW to exist, several necessary conditions must be met. First, indeterminism must be ontologically real, rather than just a matter of epistemic uncertainty. Under indeterminism, I argued, Kim’s exclusion argument fails to rule out MC, leaving us with an opening to develop a believable account of MC. To get there, the following facts must in turn be true of neural processing: (1) quantum domain randomness must be amplified up to the level of randomness in macroscopic neural information processing, which (2) would have to be able to harness this randomness to fulfill information processing aims, and (3) there would have to be a role for the subclass of information processing that we call ‘mental,’ particularly the subclass of the mental that we regard as consciously volitional, in the specification of the ends to which such harnessing will apply, if conscious willing is to be agentic or causal of the realization of such aims. In my book I laid out a detailed case that these conditions are met, permitting the physical realization of a type 1 LFW. In order to have a type 2 LFW an additional condition would have to be met, namely: (4) the nervous system would have to be able to make decisions about how it would like to change itself, and then have the means to change itself, over time, into the intended type of decider.

LFW requires non-illusory downward MC. ‘Downward’ here means that events at a supervening level can influence outcomes at the rootmost level. In this context it would mean that information can bias which possible particle paths are realized. There is no wiggling out of this. If we want MC, and a FW or MR rooted in mental events that have/cause real consequences, we must defend the position that an informational entity, such as an intention or plan, can bias what possible particle paths open at the rootmost level can and do become real. But an entity at a supervening level cannot, logically, change its own physical basis because there can be no causa sui. This is where criterial causation via reparameterization comes in, because this allows what supervenes now to constrain what can supervene in the future.

How might such constraining work in the brain? The key pattern to which neurons respond is temporal coincidence. A neuron will only fire if it receives a certain number of coincident inputs from other neurons. Criterial causation occurs where physical criteria imposed by synaptic weights on coincident inputs in turn realize informational criteria for firing. This permits information to be downwardly causal regarding which indeterministic events at the rootmost level will be realized; Only those possible rootmost physical causal chains that meet physically realized informational criteria can drive a postsynaptic neuron to fire, and thus become causal at the level of information processing. Typically the only thing that the set of all possible rootmost physical causal chains that meet those criteria have in common is that they meet the informational criteria set. To try to cut information out of the causal picture here is a mistake; The only way to understand why it is that just this subset of possible physical causal chains—namely those that are also informational causal chains—can occur, is to understand what *informational* criteria delimit that class of possible outcomes.

As Eddy Nachmias put it my Oct. 2013 thread here: “the fact that informational state S1 could be realized by a range of physical states P1-PN and that info state S2 counterfactually depends on S1 but *not* any one of the specific physical states, including the one that actually realizes S1 on this occasion (e.g., P3) suggests that S1 is what makes a difference to S2 in a way that P3 does not. If we want to causally manipulate S2, manipulating P3 may not do it (e.g., if we alter it to P1 or P4, or one of the other S1 realizers); rather, we need to manipulate S1 (yes, by altering its realizers in the right way, but the right way will involve considerations of the S-level, not the P-level). S2 *rather than* S7 occurs *because* S1 *rather than* S1' occurred, and not because P1 rather than P4 occurred.”

Information only comes into existence by virtue of a decoder receiving input that matches its conditions (typically placed on the phase relationships or patterns in incoming energy) for the release of some effect, say, an action potential sent to other such decoders. But a decoder also serves as a ‘filter’ on the set of all potentially causal inputs, since it will only change the system of decoders in which it is embedded, namely, by firing, if its physically realized informational criteria are met.

Information cannot be anything like an energy that imposes forces, because it is not material even when it is realized in the material substrate. Information’s causal power consists in ‘filtering’ informational causal chains out of the set of all possible physical causal chains by constraining which sets of possible physical causal chains can occur. Although every informational causal chain is also a physical causal chain, most physical causal chains are not informational causal chains. Information is downwardly causal not as a material force, but as constraints that only allow the realization of sets of possible physical causal chains at the rootmost level that also comprise informational causal chains. Physical laws are not violated by this. Every possible physical causal chain conserves energy and momentum and so on. But only those possibilities allowed by physical laws which also meet informational criteria pass the physically realized informational filter, and become informationally causal, either by reparameterizing the criteria by which other neurons will assess future input, by changing their synaptic weights, or by triggering other neural firing.

Information is multiply realizable because which particular set of spike inputs ̶ and thus what particular information ̶ will make the neuron fire is unforeseeable, so long as the physical/informational criteria for firing are met. If neural causal chains are also informational causal chains, and informationally equivalent informational causal chains are realizable in multiple different neural or particle causal chains, then the parsimonious model is one of information causing information. Yes, there must always be some physical realization of information, but under physical/informational criterial causation, which one it happens to be is irrelevant so long as informational criteria are met. Chains of successive informational criterial satisfactions and criterial resettings afford the physical realization of downward MC.

Derk Pereboom in a previous thread said “if on some proposal, a dualist or a nonreductivist one, M and P are distinct causes of E, the threat posed by exclusionary reasoning will be neutralized by any response on which the number of causes is reduced to just one. There are two ways to achieve this: a first is by eliminating all but one of the causes, and the second is by identifying the causes.” If mental events are a type of information, and information is identical to acts of decoding immaterial (i.e. not made of mass) relationships or patterns among physical inputs, then mental events are identical to some class of acts of decoding. But note, this identity does not make mental events have physical properties like mass or momentum, because the identity is not with physical events at some instant, but with a process that is realized in physical events. Moreover, acts of decoding patterns cannot be reduced to a level where the patterns are not explicit, say the rootmost level, because the decoder only responds to a pattern at a level where it is explicit. Thus the identification is not with events at the microscopic level or even the neuronal level, but at the level of decoding the non-physical patterns to which the decoder is sensitive. Under determinism supervening informational criteria cannot filter out possible but non-informational causal chains at the rootmost level, because there is only one possible causal chain. But if indeterminism is the case, supervening informational criteria can make a difference regarding which possibilities at the rootmost level happen. That is, under indeterminism but not determinism, there is non-redundant causal work for informational criteria to do.

But how does this give the brain the capacity to freely will? It is not enough for neurons to filter out non-informational possible physical causal chains. It must be the case that some neural activity that we associate with volition, can control the parameters that neurons will apply in the future to enact such acts of filtering. Control comes from executive circuits that can plan, imagine, deliberate and make decisions in light of highest level demands and needs, and that can ‘rewire' circuits and reparameterize neurons, by changing synaptic weights, to embody new criteria for firing that will fulfill current executive ends. The downward causation afforded by the informational filtering of possible rootmost causal chains becomes agentic downward causation when executive circuits can rewire lower level circuits to fulfill whatever criteria they demand.

What Is Information? What Is Informational Causation?

It seems most people have gone home for the holidays, which is good! I will continue posting a few things here in hopes of getting feedback from Flickers philosophers once people get back from spending time with family and friends.

My goal in this post is to try to unstick some of the common intuitions that many people tend to have about energy and information, even hard-headed physicalist scientists and philosophers like some of us. This post will be a little longer than usual, because unsticking the metaphors we live by is as hard as getting crazy glue off of fingers (itself perhaps a badly sticky metaphor).

People typically have an intuition of what the physical is, rooted in the idea of a weighty substance. Often people intuit the magnitude of the fundamental substance, presumed to be energy, in terms of amounts, like varying masses of clay. We learn in school that energy is a substance that can neither be created nor destroyed, a fact that we might intuit using a metaphor like the reshaping of clay, which obviously does not and cannot change its amount. More abstract models of the fundamental substance that we learned about in school centered on the concepts of the amplitude and frequency of energy. We learned to picture light as having an amplitude and a frequency, that we modeled as a wave whose height corresponded to light’s amplitude, and whose spatial wavelength corresponded to its temporal frequency or ‘color.’ When I Socratically probe my friends, colleagues and family members concerning their understanding of energy, this is generally about as far as I get before annoyed looks tell me to back off.

Common intuitions based on these kinds of models are wholly inadequate for understanding what information is, and how it can be causal in the universe. Here I will argue that we physicalists need to re-evaluate what we mean by “the physical” to accommodate information and (downward) informational causation, because, I will argue, information is fundamentally realized in and is about *patterns* of energy. Our traditional intuitions of energy rooted in models of the amounts of energy don’t help us understand information or informational causation very well, and in fact may hinder our understanding. Whereas it makes sense to reduce global forces to the sum of local forces, and total amounts to the sum of local parts’ amounts, this does not makes sense at all for patterns. Reductionism to local forces and particle interactions fails because patterns are inherently relational over space, time, and other dimensions (e.g. color relationships, social relationships, etc). That is, patterns and relationships are not localistic. They are globalistic, so reducing them to a level where a decoder can no longer decode the pattern or relationship in question is pointless.

The program of reductionistic physicalism, which conceivably could have worked for energetic amplitude and frequency, is doomed to fail for energetic relationships or patterns. Understanding causation at the level of information will require a holistic understanding of energy, because patterns are holistic or relational, and acts of decoding patterns have to occur at a level where those relationships are explicit, not implicit. That is, patterns cannot be reduced to a level below where the relationships to decode are present, or the pattern of relationships to which a decoder is sensitive will be lost. But if an act of decoding can trigger a change in a physical system, then reductionistic physicalism won’t work at all, because then even non-informational causal chains, say among local particles, become influenced by global energetic relationships. That is, once patterns and information become causal in the universe, because of the evolution of decoders that do things if patterns are present, then reductionistic physicalism fails. It fails for the entire universe even if it fails just here on Earth, should, say, criterial causation be unique to our Earth because life is unique to Earth (let's hope not!).

To make informational causation even more alien to the causation studied by physics and described by our best physical laws, spatiotemporal patterns of energy can be created and destroyed, so conservation laws (of energy, momentum, spin etc.) that apply to amounts of energy are not relevant to understanding  informational causation. Rather informational causation is about successions of pattern-decoding acts, where the occurrence of one act of pattern-decoding plays a role in the occurrence of a subsequent act of pattern-decoding. Ideas that were central for understanding standard physical causation among particles, such as amount, force, frequency and conservation are no longer very relevant or useful, and in fact may hinder us. To understand informational causation means to understand decoding, particularly the decoding of energetic patterns among inputs to the decoder. It requires understanding how decoders trigger other decoders, and also how decoders reparameterize each other for possible future acts of now altered decoding.

The technical word for energetic relationships is phase (e.g., a sine and cosine wave of the same amplitude and frequency have a phase difference of ninety degrees). Spatial phase arises from spatial relationships (i.e. patterns), and is related to the everyday idea of shape. Temporal phase is related to the idea of timing. Physicalists’ intuitions have been centered on the amount or frequency or energy, leading to the misleading intuition that causation must involve the transfer of a conserved quantity of energy. But if we instead focus on energetic phase relationships, which can vary independently of both amplitude and frequency, we can reconceive causation as occurring among patterns that trigger patterns, and among acts of decoding patterns that trigger acts of decoding patterns, none of which are conserved or apply forces or have amounts. When we think of causation among energetic patterns afforded by acts of decoding patterns that then change the system, we enter a new causal world where there are no (informational) forces and nothing (informational) is conserved.

In ordinary language, information is commonly thought of as a noun describing a thing that we locate out there, whether a book in a library or a webpage on a server. But a pattern of energy, whether a book, a webpage, or a compact disc, is only informative for a decoder capable of decoding it. Change the decoder from English to Mandarin, and the energetic pattern “women” goes from referring to ‘female adult humans’ to meaning ‘we.’ So the informational content is not specified by the pattern of input, but by how it is read out. Things like books and webpages and CDs should be thought of as ‘potential information,’ whose potential to become information depends on whether and how they are decoded by decoders that take them as input.

Shannon did not think of information as a thing but as a process. He simplified the idea to include a ‘sender’ that sends an encoding or message along some communication channel to some ‘receiver’ that decodes it. If uncertainty is reduced from two possibilities (0 or 1) to one certainty (say, 1), that comprises one bit of information. So information is a process that involves a reduction in uncertainty for a receiver of inputs. But this conception cannot capture everything about information because a person can decode a pile of rocks that, say, just happen to lie in the shape of a cross, as a message from God. So an encoder or act of intentional encoding is not necessary for information to come into existence through an act of decoding. Neither is a communication channel necessary, because a receiver might decode internally generated phosphenes as messages from God as well, or as ghosts, or whatever. The crucial point is that information arises principally from acts of decoding inputs.

If information just is acts of decoding inputs, such acts set up equivalence classes of outcomes among physical events. If those equivalence classes have to do with criteria that have to be met in order to count as an instance of a certain class, then neither the class nor its members is defined by physical attributes of particles, such as mass, momentum, wavelength or position. An informational class is defined by the meeting of informational criteria, which are in turn realized in the satisfaction of physical criteria for neural firing placed on spatial configurations and temporal patterns (again, ‘phase relationships’) among inputs, and ultimately particles. For example, the class of things that count as a hat has nothing to do with momentum, spin, mass or particle position.

Importantly, neither an informational class, nor an informational configuration or pattern  has an objective or object-like existence in addition to the particles in which the patterns is realized. A pattern or configuration only comes into existence and becomes causal in the universe by virtue of a decoder that decodes its inputs such that if this pattern is present, the decoder does something to the physical system in which it is embedded, perhaps causing the system to change its physical/informational state. Upon such an act of decoding ‘kinetic information’ occurs. Informational causation occurs when kinetic information triggers the occurrence of subsequent kinetic information, and so on. Such a cascade across decoders can be thought of as a kinetic informational causal chain.

In order to understand what allows one act of decoding to trigger subsequent different acts of decoding, we must first understand what counts as an act of decoding for a neuron. Successful decoding of inputs occurs when an instance from the class of all combinations of inputs that could make the neuron fire in fact occurs as input to the neuron, making it fire. (We will ignore the information potentially carried by neural non-responsiveness here). But what defines this class of potential information? A neuron will generally fire only when a certain number of action potentials arrives within an extremely short duration, say 25ms. The inputs must share very particular temporal and spatial (phase) relationships. For example, they have to arrive together, and they have to arrive on very particular parts of the neuron, before the neuron will decode the input as an instance of the class that can drive it. An act of neural decoding therefore typically involves an assessment of energetic phase. Having decoders respond to particular spatial and temporal relationships or patterns in input allowed patterns or phase in energy to become causal in the universe. Whereas prebiological classes of physical causation generally were unresponsive to phase differences in input, being more responsive to other attributes of energy such as its amplitude and frequency, life introduced ‘phase causation’ or ‘pattern causation’ into the universe, as far as we know. Informational causation occurs when there is a succession of pattern decoding events, as when the firing of this neuron, tuned to pattern A, in part drives the firing of another neuron, tuned to pattern B.

But informational causation is more powerful even than that because the criteria that a neuron applies to evaluate its inputs can change or be changed by other neurons’ inputs. This subclass of informational causation is made possible in the human brain via the resetting of the informational parameters that will drive a neuron, realized in resetting synaptic weights so that a neuron now effectively receives and responds to different driving inputs than it did before the act of resetting. Thus informational causation is realized in criterial causation, which is itself an instance of the more general class of energetic phase causation or pattern causation.

 

But are patterns or spatiotemporal relationships themselves material? Well certainly the relationships decoders are sensitive to are relationships among material inputs. But those relationships are not made up of any additional material substance. Relationships are not material. A pattern does not have mass or momentum or spin.  Also those relationships do not even exist in the world. They exist relative to a decoder sensitive to them. For example, it is only certain spatial relationships among material components that will be recognized as the pattern known as ‘the big dipper.’ But the pattern that a decoder is tuned to (say a neuron will only fire if the pattern of the big dipper is present) does not exist in reality. There is no big dipper out there, even though there are suns out there. So information is about pattern decoding that is made possible by whatever relationships the decoder defines as relevant. The relationships are among energetic inputs, not necessarily energy that exists out there independent of any acts of decoding. So information is inherently decoder-specific. Ultimately this is the reason that that subclass of brain information that we call "consciousness" is inherently subjective.