Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Give the Gift of Friendship

It's free.
It's fun.

So this year, I would encourage to find a geek and be their pal. Befriend a geek this year; we all need it!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!


Befriend a Geek from White October on Vimeo.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Information and the Teleological Argument

Before I moved on to the Moral Argument for God's Existence, I was doing a little more reading and thinking about the Teleological Argument. Basically, the teleological argument says, we see design therefore there's a Designer. Nevertheless, how do we know we see design? What feature of a "machine" implies design? How does the blueprint for that machine play a part in these observations? Moreover, how does the concept of God connect with these “blueprints”?

Well, the simple answer is that "machines" have information associated with them. They are conceived immaterially and are birthed physically through a blueprint or plan that is expressed through some sort of language or code. Information is this code.

In English, the word information means to “give form” to something. It is not the thing ultimately formed, nor is it the medium that conveys formation. Information is the immaterial meaning that eventually has expression in the sensible world.

One researcher, Andrzej Chmielecki, claims that information really is just the ability to discriminate:
The fundamental feature of animate systems (which are all informational systems) is their ability to discriminate and select. From single cells to plants to animals and human beings the behavior of animate systems depends on what they can discriminate, be it the concentration of certain substances, or the magnitude of physical parameters like temperature, humidity, or shape. What counts here is thus some detected difference between things that can be distinguished by a system. "Difference" and "detection" are thus two key words in our enterprise of grasping what information is. Information is, roughly speaking, any detected difference . . . . .
And later:
Information is an abstract entity. It has no separate existence on its own, because no difference can exist save there are real states of affairs between which the difference holds, and which constitute its code.
I think this makes sense because the physical “blueprint” we usually call information (but isn’t), only comes about through an immaterial process (especially when we are looking at higher concepts such as art, love, morality, spirituality, ect.).

According to another researcher, Werner Gitt,* information equals the sum of the following:
  • Statistics: the number and kind of symbols used in the code.
  • Syntax: the permissible combination of symbols; the structural characteristics of the code.
  • Semantics: the sequential rules for the code which carries the actual meaning of the message.
  • Pragmatics: the sender's invitation to action; the intention of the sender.
  • Apobetics: the results, the consequences and outcome of the reception; the receiver's action predicated on the sender's intention.
Thus, information is a code made up of "freely willed" conventions and arbitrarily defined symbols designed to discriminate between states. There is no information without a code, and no code without an intelligent sender. Even if no "author" is physically present, you can still know that there was an author. It requires a material medium for storage and transmission but can only be generated from non-material sources--souls, consciousnesses, wills.# It cannot be generated from a material entities and, according to Gitt, is the basis for all program-directed technological and biological systems.

But how do we know that information is non-material? Gitt attempts to demonstrate this by imagining a sandy beach. On this beach, we take a stick and write out a meaningful English sentence. Then, we smooth it over with our foot and write another. The material in which the information was temporarily stored had not really changed. The sand's mass and energy had not changed; it's configuration changed, not it's material. The meaning in the code transcends (if I can use that word) the sum total of all of the silica, quartz and other materials found in the sand and is expressed in the arbitrarily-, but intelligently-, constructed code we call English. The meaningful English sentences, obviously intelligently designed and evolving (not to put too fine a point on it), is the insubstantial code. It is the active force that motivates structure, cohesion, discrimination and perception in the physical world. While it has no form in itself, it must reside in some kind media. Unfortunately, due to metonymic conventions, it is sometimes difficult to separate the media (the blueprint, speech, book, DNA) from the information it holds. For example, sounds (and their accompanying information, speech, music) are not stored on an MP3 file, rather they are merely causally connected to the 1’s and 0’s on the magnetic disk. In much the same, information is not on the medium.

Is it true that the material world cannot explain the non-material? Obviously, I'm not going to be able to elaborate on my belief that non-material entities exist here (for starters, I think that Kant's noumenal world, among other things, is generally correct), so for now I will just assume immaterial entities exist for sake of argument and try to elaborate on that at a later time. If non-material entities--such as minds, ideas, consciousness, spirits, God--exist, then we can should be able to see how they produce tangible results in the physical world. We have a thought (which, I argue, may have material components, but it is essentially immaterial) that is transferred into language, then becomes an impulse to do something. As this impulse is transferred, either through speech or action or set in some physical medium for future use, it now becomes able to form something in the physical world. If information is non-material and has a non-material origin, yet can be expressed in the material world (our English sentences written in the sand, for example), then it seems plausible that the ultimate creator of this code (God) exists.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what the book of Genesis suggests that God did, through some kind of information stream (apparently, speech), when He created the world. In the New Testament, Jesus is identifies as the Word (logos, both speech and action). This is, perhaps, an apt description of what information is: arbitrary symbols that are designed to express, motivate or otherwise create or cause action in the material world. While I don’t believe Jesus was purely information (that seems rather absurd), it is clear from the Bible that before there was a material world, there was some sort of code in preparation for everything substantial. The author of this code is God.

For pantheists, this makes a lot of sense. God is, for them perhaps, the insubstantial code behind everything we see in the universe. From my point of view, this does not go far enough though because information is only an expression of the author’s intent. Therefore, there must be an author beyond, before and superior to the information itself; artificers are not the same as the artifact.

I’m not entirely sure that this line of argumentation is completely persuasive. I’ll have to give this some more thought, but information does, for myself, seem to play an important role in how I can properly apprehend the existence of God.

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* I first encountered Gitt's work at Answers in Genesis. AiG presents a lot ideas that are, frankly, interesting and supportive of my views in general, but also present some hastily constructed arguments that, to me, seem far fetched and not terribly defensible. Gitt, while controversial, raises some interesting points. I have ignored his major arguments about the validity of evolutionary theories, which--in all honesty--I don't completely understand yet and concentrated on his proofs for God's existence.

#Of course, animals and plants may produce information. It is probably a quantitative rather than qualitative difference between the information created by non-material entities (human souls, God) and reflexive, responsive information created by plants and animals; animals posses souls (nefesh) but human beings posses living souls (nefesh khaya) in the image of our Creator. Leave it to my cat-loving wife to destroy my carefully constructed argument; no wonder I'm so conflicted! hehe

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Monday, December 8, 2008

All We are is Dust in the Wind . . .

Not.


Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life

I laughed hard when I saw this again. And I think, in a way, it has finally brought me out of my funk. When I watched that video, I had my own little existential realization, even if the universe is completely meaningless, we still get to create our own meaning in life. I plan on getting out of my own locker room and making my own meaning.

Oh the absurdity of absurdity!