184 Environments of intelligence
that information is strictly regular co-occurrence of world affairs in all possible
worlds. Irregular or asymmetric co-occurrences shall not be admitted under any
conditions. Misinformation is not information that happens to be false but will be
better characterised as non-information or pseudo-information. This is what Fred
Dretske claimed to be the case for information, so as to make it foundational to the
possibility of knowledge, and this is what I claim to be the case, even independent
of epistemological considerations.
Given these characteristics, and given the logical impossibility of analytic a
posteriori statements, the claim that information has the said characteristics will
be justified a priori. We will not have to investigate a manifold of real-world informational relations and then proceed to an empirical generalisation that information has the said characteristics. No epistemological claim could be built on such
foundations. Information, as conceived of here, is an elementary and ubiquitous
relation, and cannot be otherwise.
A defence of analyticity will already become impractical for H-2: what is contained in the concepts of organism and environment and, for that matter, in the
conceptual distinction between organism and environment? “All environments
do not comprise the organisms inhabiting them” would be a start, but it is precisely the organism-environment distinction that has been called into question
by environmental constructivism, developmental systems theory and all serious
claims for the extendedness and environmental scaffolding of organismic processes. These critiques are by no means intended to be conceptual analyses of the
terms “organism” and “environment” but mobilise empirical evidence from various domains of biology. Nor is this a terminological issue that could be mended
by linguistic convention. We can redefine the term information, adding markers
of conceptual difference to prior definitions, and then probe for the analyticity
of statements about information, so conceived. We might try something similar
for environments, following the distinction in Brandon (1995) among external,
ecological and selective environments. However, these specifications will rely
on empirical concepts such as ecological equilibria or natural selection. We cannot say what holds for natural selection and ecological equilibria in all possible
worlds, although we can say many things about what holds for them in this world,
on the Earth as we know it. All resulting statements will be a posteriori, and cannot be analytic.
If “environment” was difficult, “organism” will verge on the impossible. If we
confine a definition of organisms to a near-tautology such as “All organisms live”,
we are stuck with that near-tautology (all organisms that are not either dead or
not yet born are alive indeed). Otherwise, we would have to unpack that description into statements that refer to uncontested constituents of vital processes, such
as “all organisms develop” and “metabolise” and “reproduce” and “accomplish
homeostasis” and “respond to stimuli”. Are these unmarried-bachelor or unhappybachelor type statements? I strongly suspect the latter, as, first, these descriptions
do not denote elementary relations but include complex concepts themselves, and
as, second, we can refer to known organisms and hence empirical knowledge
only when subsuming these characteristics under the concept of an organism
that information is strictly regular co-occurrence of world affairs in all possible
worlds. Irregular or asymmetric co-occurrences shall not be admitted under any
conditions. Misinformation is not information that happens to be false but will be
better characterised as non-information or pseudo-information. This is what Fred
Dretske claimed to be the case for information, so as to make it foundational to the
possibility of knowledge, and this is what I claim to be the case, even independent
of epistemological considerations.
Given these characteristics, and given the logical impossibility of analytic a
posteriori statements, the claim that information has the said characteristics will
be justified a priori. We will not have to investigate a manifold of real-world informational relations and then proceed to an empirical generalisation that information has the said characteristics. No epistemological claim could be built on such
foundations. Information, as conceived of here, is an elementary and ubiquitous
relation, and cannot be otherwise.
A defence of analyticity will already become impractical for H-2: what is contained in the concepts of organism and environment and, for that matter, in the
conceptual distinction between organism and environment? “All environments
do not comprise the organisms inhabiting them” would be a start, but it is precisely the organism-environment distinction that has been called into question
by environmental constructivism, developmental systems theory and all serious
claims for the extendedness and environmental scaffolding of organismic processes. These critiques are by no means intended to be conceptual analyses of the
terms “organism” and “environment” but mobilise empirical evidence from various domains of biology. Nor is this a terminological issue that could be mended
by linguistic convention. We can redefine the term information, adding markers
of conceptual difference to prior definitions, and then probe for the analyticity
of statements about information, so conceived. We might try something similar
for environments, following the distinction in Brandon (1995) among external,
ecological and selective environments. However, these specifications will rely
on empirical concepts such as ecological equilibria or natural selection. We cannot say what holds for natural selection and ecological equilibria in all possible
worlds, although we can say many things about what holds for them in this world,
on the Earth as we know it. All resulting statements will be a posteriori, and cannot be analytic.
If “environment” was difficult, “organism” will verge on the impossible. If we
confine a definition of organisms to a near-tautology such as “All organisms live”,
we are stuck with that near-tautology (all organisms that are not either dead or
not yet born are alive indeed). Otherwise, we would have to unpack that description into statements that refer to uncontested constituents of vital processes, such
as “all organisms develop” and “metabolise” and “reproduce” and “accomplish
homeostasis” and “respond to stimuli”. Are these unmarried-bachelor or unhappybachelor type statements? I strongly suspect the latter, as, first, these descriptions
do not denote elementary relations but include complex concepts themselves, and
as, second, we can refer to known organisms and hence empirical knowledge
only when subsuming these characteristics under the concept of an organism