Meaning = Information + Evolution
History and Philosophy of Physics
2016-11-09 v1
Abstract
Notions like meaning, signal, intentionality, are difficult to relate to a physical word. I study a purely physical definition of "meaningful information", from which these notions can be derived. It is inspired by a model recently illustrated by Kolchinsky and Wolpert, and improves on Dretske classic work on the relation between knowledge and information. I discuss what makes a physical process into a "signal".
Cite
@article{arxiv.1611.02420,
title = {Meaning = Information + Evolution},
author = {Carlo Rovelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.02420},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
6 pages, 1 figure