The Information Philosopher
The Information Philosopher, as do all who would make an advance in knowledge, stands on the shoulders of giant
philosophers and
scientists of the past - and present
Information Philosophy is an account of creation, a story about the origin and evolution of the universe, of life, and of intelligence. It is also a story about freedom and determinism, about good and evil, about knowledge and ignorance.
There is a battle going on. It is a struggle between destructive chaotic processes that drive a microscopic underworld of random events versus constructive cosmic processes that create information structures with extraordinary emergent properties.
The created information structures range from galaxies, stars, and planets, to molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. They are the structures of terrestrial life from viruses and bacteria to sensible and intelligent beings. And they are the constructed ideal world of thought, of intellect, of spirit, including the laws of nature, in which we humans play a role as co-creator.
Based on insights into these cosmic creation processes, the Information Philosopher proposes refinements of three ideas about perennial problems in philosophy that have a significant chance of being testable hypotheses.
If these ideas are verifiable empirically, they are likely to change some well-established philosophical positions. Even more important, they reconcile idealism and materialism and provide a new view of how humanity fits into the universe.
The three ideas are
- A scientific model for free will and creativity informed by the complementary roles of microscopic randomness and adequate macroscopic determinism in a temporal sequence.
- A basis for objective value beyond humanism and bioethics, grounded in the fundamental information creation processes behind the structure and evolution of the universe
- An explanation or epistemological model of knowledge formation and communication. Knowledge and information are neither matter nor energy, but they require matter for expression and energy for communication.
All three ideas depend on understanding modern cosmology, physics, biology, and neuroscience, but especially the intimate connection between quantum mechanics and the second law of thermodynamics.
All three are based on the theory of information, which alone can establish the existential status of ideas, not just the ideas of freedom, values, and knowledge, but other-worldly speculations in natural religion like God and immortality.
All three have been anticipated by earlier thinkers, but can now be defended on empirical grounds. Our goal is less to innovate than to reach the best possible consensus among philosophers living and dead, an intersubjective agreement between philosophers that is the surest sign of a knowledge advance in natural science.
Philosophy is the love of knowledge or wisdom. Information philosophy (I-Phi or ΙΦ) quantifies knowledge as actionable information.
What is
information that merits its use as the foundation of a new philosophical method of inquiry?
Abstract information is neither matter nor energy, yet it needs matter for its concrete embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is the modern spirit, the ghost in the machine.
Over 100 years ago, Bertrand Russell, with the help of
G. E. Moore,
Alfred North Whitehead, and
Ludwig Wittgenstein, proposed logic and language as the proper foundational basis, not only of philosophy, but also of mathematics and science.
Information is a better abstract basis for philosophy, and for science as well, capable of answering questions about metaphysics (the ontology of things themselves), epistemology (the existential status of ideas and how we know them), and idealism itself.
Please see our
introduction to the principles of
increasing information and
"soft" causality.
This website version of Information Philosopher has seven parts, each with multiple chapters. Navigation at the bottom of each page will take you to the next or previous part or chapter.
Teacher and Scholar links display additional material on some pages, and reveal hidden footnotes on some pages. The footnotes themselves are in the Scholar section.
Our goal is for the website to contain all the great philosophical discussions of our three ideas, with primary source materials (in the original languages) where possible.
All original content on Information Philosopher is available for your use, without requesting
permission, under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
Copyrights for all excerpted and quoted works remain with their authors and publishers.
For Teachers
To hide this material, click on the Normal link.
A web page may contain two extra levels of material. The Normal page is material for newcomers and students of the Information Philosophy. Two hidden levels contain material for teachers (e.g., secondary sources) and for scholars (e.g., footnotes, and original language quotations).
Teacher materials on a page will typically include references to secondary sources and more extended explanations of the concepts and arguments. Secondary sources will include books, articles, and online resources. Extended explanations should be more suitable for teaching others about the core philosophical ideas, as seen from an information perspective.
For Scholars
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Scholarly materials will generally include more primary sources, more in-depth technical and scientific discussions where appropriate, original language versions of quotations, and references to all sources.
Footnotes for a page appear in the Scholar materials. The footnote indicators themselves are only visible in Scholar mode.