(December 15, 2021 at 3:13 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: If the god that Neo-Scholastic is talking about is a principle, then it doesn’t exist, just like emotions, numbers, names, languages, songs, stories, colors, ideas, designs, information, logic do not exist on their own.
I’ve already given the example with music, but here it is again.
Quote:Music can be recorded on a vinyl record. It can be present as an analog signal on a cassette’s tape, it could be in the form as digital information on a hard disk.
It is information and information can be copied from medium to medium. The medium is made of atoms. (Unless if you use light pulses to represent the information or an electrical signal or some other type of field).
We can destroy the tapes, the vinyl records, the hard drives. Where did the atoms go? They are still here. (Conservation of matter and energy rule from physics).
Where did the information go? It was destroyed/scrambled. (No conservation of information).
In order for such things to exist, such as the design of a chair, you need atoms. A certain group of atoms can represent the “chair”.
Such things do not have an effect on reality. For example, you will never see the number 5 walking down the street, kicking a ball.
Music does not go around and push air molecules and other atoms around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hiding_theorem
Information is conserved. In fact, one can use rules about information to derive Quantum Mechanics.
One could argue that without "things" there would be no information, but without information, there can be no things. I see information as something just as real as a chair.
