Information, Reality, and Modern Physics

ABSTRACT

Since special relativity and quantum mechanics, information has become a central concept in our description and understanding of physical reality. This statement may be construed in different ways, depending on the meaning we attach to the concept of information, and on our ontological commitments. One distinction is between mind-independent ‘Shannon information’ and a traditional conception of information, connected with meaning and knowledge. Another, orthogonal, distinction is between information considered as a fundamental physical entity (Wheeler’s ‘it from bit’), and an ontological agnosticism where physics is about our information of the world rather than about the world itself. Combinations of these lead to various possibilities. I argue that adopting mind-independent information as ontologically fundamental is a hitherto undefended position with important advantages. This position appears similar to Floridi’s informational structural realism, but is fundamentally different. Rather than ‘epistemically indistinguishable differences’, it requires a robust conception of information as consisting of readable and interpretable messages.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to two unnamed referees of this journal for their constructive comments and criticism, which have helped to improve this paper, and to Prof. S. Virvidakis of the University of Athens for his continuous encouragement.

ORCID

Emmanuel Saridakis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0724-5425