What Is Information? :: Science Research Essays

What Is Information?ABSTRACT thither is a striking paradox in contemporary mastermind and cognitive science. Their purported fundamental category of development either is not defined or is used in a Shann geniussque sense, which is unable to account for the fermentes of edict and supremacy when content, not the quantity of information, is concerned. I try to provide a much adequate formula which is applicable to a wide range of systems normally counted as informational systems. Representative examples would include a single biological cell, animals, persons, and computers. In fact, I consider information-defined here as any detectable fight of physical states-to be the determining principle of all animate systems, one in which determines both their achitecture and their operation. I claim that the concept of information is a realist category and that information itself is, in ontological terms, an irreal entity unable to act on its own. Three hierarchically ordered forms of in formation argon distinguished and a number of applications of the proposed definition are discussed. In the books and papers on brain science, cognitive science, etc., one of the most frequently used terms is information. We are told that brains and their various subunits down to the level of a single neuron process information, store it, retrieve it, transmit it, etc. They do, indeed. The point, however, is that we are not told what information is.Perhaps information is meant to be understood in the sense introductory given by C. Shannon? If so, it would be a huge misunderstanding for at least two reasons. First, his approach is entirely content-neutral. It concerns only technical/economical, numerical problems of data transmission and communication. Brain activity, on the other hand, is concerned with regulation and control, where the content of information matters a lot. Furthermore, since according to Shannons approach information is what reduces uncertainty, the undivided idea presupposes such things as knowledge of a priori probabilities a necessary which can hardly be attributed to, say, frogs and butterflies. It can serve well the purposes of mathematicians and engineers dealing with well-specified communication problems, but it is useless with regard to the systems which must cope with varieties of environmental stimuli.I suppose that what is taken for granted here is a commonsense, mentalistic intension information is thought to be a piece of knowledge. If this is the assumption cosmos made, we must either flatly reject it because of its strong anthropocentric bias, or we must treat it figuratively, as a conventional term of trick with no objective counterpart in reality.