Friday, May 2, 2014

INTELLIGENCE AND INFORMATION

"There is no subject without object, and visa versa."-Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

All of existence is in your mind. When you die, the universe (as you know it) cease to exist. When you die, I die…we all die-at least it will seem that way to you. With this logic, the world is destroyed and created every second in the minds of the life forms that perceives it.

What about the saying "out of sight, out of mind?" If you can't perceive it, is it there? If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound? If there is no instrument to detect sound, does sound exist? Sight and sound are two senses these questions are dealing with. I would suggest that an object exist without being observed. Once light makes contact with the object, information from that object is sent out into space. Instruments, such as the eyes, are designed to receive those light rays (information) and send it to the brain for processing. If there were no eye to receive the information, the information would still exist independently of the eye. In this case, the information would be useless and insignificant-but it would be there. The same would go for the tree falling in the forest: information would be sent throughout the surrounding space, but if there were no instruments to detect and process the information, the information would be useless and insignificant.

To me, this creates even more complex questions: if there are no instruments/apparatuses to detect and process information that would otherwise be useless, how did the apparatus/instrument become correlated with information?  Which came first, the ear or sound, the eye or sight, the nose or smell, etc.?  It is important to note that sight, smell, hearing, objects, and taste are, by themselves, information.  They have no or very little complexity-I use complexity loosely.  On the other hand, the apparatuses that detect and process the information is highly complex.  To begin the construction of an eye, one would need to know that light rays exist.  But how would one know that light rays exist if one has never seen light?  You don't start building mountain climbing gear if you've never seen a mountain before, or at least know that mountains exist.  Before beginning any construction project, one needs to have an end goal.  Clearly, the end goal for ears are to hear, eyes to see, etc.  So, again, how did the instrument and information become correlated?  The information can exist by itself-as I demonstrated in the previous paragraph-but the instrument would have no purpose to exist without the information.  Perhaps the previous questions can be answered as to which came first.  In this case, it would be the information and then the instrument(s). 

If the instrument is a result of the existence of the information and the two are correlated and interdependent, what forces and intelligence fused the two?  The first part of the question can be answered: tremendous amounts of energy are all around and in us.  One look at Mother Nature's wrath and we can all see that strong forces exist in the natural world.  The second part of the question is not so easily answered: where did the intelligence come from in the fusing of biological instruments and information?  I say intelligence because if you have ever studied biology you know that life is very complex and intelligent.  One could say that the intelligence is within the biological machine itself, instead of intelligence existing prior to the formation of the bio-machine.  Scientists assert that the bio-intelligence evolved over millions of years.  For the sake of not disputing their assertion, I will use their hypothesis to ask another question: what is this mysterious, self assembling, self learning, self generating soup we call DNA?   On the other hand, I would suggest that intelligence existed prior to the formation of bio-machines; and it is that intelligence that is responsible for the fusing of the bio-instruments and information.  There is a mysterious, invisible mind in the formation of the bio-instrument that goes beyond the bio-machine's built-in intelligence.  For example, a computer has its own built-in intelligence. But you know, by simply observing the computer, that there is an intelligence outside (invisible) the computer that designed it. 

So if the information is going to be useful, it needs an instrument specifically suited to detect and process it.  The instrument shows a complexity that is indicative to intelligence.  Intelligence and information is what this is all boiling down to.  I would suggest that all that exist is intelligence and information, and the two are correlated and interdependent.