Volume 19, 1998
Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Andrzej Chmielecki
Pages 7-12
What Is Information?
There is a striking paradox in contemporary brain and cognitive science. Their purported fundamental category of information either is not defined or is used in a Shannonesque sense, which is unable to account for the processes of regulation and control when content, not the quantity of information, is concerned. I try to provide a more adequate formula which is applicable to a wide range of systems commonly counted as informational systems. Representative examples would include a single biological cell, animals, persons, and computers. In fact, I consider information-defined here as any detectable difference of physical states-to be the determining principle of all animate systems, one in which determines both their achitecture and their operation. I claim that the concept of information is a realist category and that information itself is, in ontological terms, an irreal entity unable to act on its own. Three hierarchically ordered forms of information are distinguished and a number of applications of the proposed definition are discussed.