In my books and several blog posts I have referred to the work of William A. Dembski, specifically to his book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. I complement my last blog with selected comments by Dembski in Chapter 3, “Information as Ruling Out Possibilities”:

“In everyday life, information is associated with intelligent agents who form statements to convey meaning. Accordingly, intelligent agents convey information to other intelligent agents by making meaningful statements within a system of language. Information, therefore, customarily presupposes intelligence, language, and semantics. . . . In general, information is about realizing possibilities by ruling out others. Unless possibilities are ruled out, no information can be conveyed. To say, ‘It’s raining or it’s not raining’ is uninformative precisely because this statement rules out no possibilities. On the other hand, to say, ‘It’s raining’ rules out the possibility ‘It’s not raining’ and therefore conveys information. . . . Writing in the context of human communication, Robert Stalnaker put it this way, ‘To learn something, to acquire information, is to rule out possibilities. To understand the information conveyed in a communication is to know what possibilities would be excluded by its truth.’”

I have shared with documentation in my books that the neural code is a linguistic code by which specified (meaningful) information is transmitted from a source of intelligence to and through the synaptic networks of a receptor’s brain.

The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. “Intelligent” derives from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and the verb lego, meaning to choose or select. Thus, according to its etymology, intelligence consists in choosing between. For an intelligent agent to act is therefore to choose from a range of competing possibilities. . . . Actualizing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest, and specifying the one that was actualized encapsulates how we recognize intelligent agency, or equivalently, how we detect design, (W. A. Dembski)

in my next blog post i shall include dr. william dembski’s definition of complex specified information. in an earlier post i have presented a description, but it is important to post that of dr. dembski who initially defined it in his writings. it reflects the design of our creator god, a manifestation of his intelligence in all that exists in the cosmos. it reveals how great is our god!

Ordinarily when we think of information, we think of meaningful statements that we communicate to each other. The vehicle of communication here is language, and the information is the meaning communicated by some utterance or linguistic expression. . . . For information to be generated . . . means identifying one possibility and ruling out the rest. The more possibilities get ruled out and, correspondingly, the more improbable the possibility that actually obtains, the greater the information generated. . . . To generate information is therefore to rule out possibilities. (w. A. Dembski)

Matter is raw stuff that can take any number of shapes. Information is what gives shape to matter, fixing one shape to the exclusion of others. . . . Information (from the Latin verb informare) literally means to give form or shape to something. Unlike passive or inert matter, which needs to be acted upon, information is active. Information acts on matter to give it its form, shape, arrangement, or structure. . . . The relation between matter, with its potential to assume any possible shapes, and information, with its restriction of possibilities to a narrow range of shapes, is fundamental to our understanding of the world. (W. A. Dembski)

God’s free play at the quantum level

Dembski has posed the question to traditional theism of how God, who is immaterial and Spirit, can interact with the material world, imparting information into it without applying material energy. Quantum mechanics gives nondeterminism to the universe which characterizes it as being informationally open and accommodating free will, as Alvin Plantinga has pointed out. I am posting a quote from Dembski in Chapter Five of The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, that elaborates on this question:

“. . . in a nondeterministic universe, divine action could impart information into matter without violating any physical laws by which matter operates. . . . A deity capable of co-opting randomness would impart information by arranging outcomes [with small probabilities and specification], but do so by channeling the material energy in ways that violate no principle governing matter. If divine action takes this form, the problem of finding the missing material energy by which God introduces novel information into the world simply does not arise . . . . information is then being transferred without any transfer of material energy . . . . Quantum mechanics . . . offers such a picture of the universe, allowing God free play at the quantum level . . . . In a world of irreducibly chance or random events, as some interpretations of quantum theory allow, God can channel such events toward preordained ends.”

In Part Two of “Waves in Our Brains” we see how the specified, encoded frequencies and amplitudes of wave forms generated by the immaterial mind become synchronized with the wave frequencies and amplitudes of selected cerebral modules generated by lifelong learning and archived in memory. The synchronized wave forms in turn stimulate the synaptic transmission through coherent neural networks of the encoded meaning, purpose and intended action of the cognitive mind.

It is important to consider the relationship between information and energy and how information is transmitted through synaptic networks. I am citing the important work of Dr. William A. Dembski, whom I am blessed to consider a friend and from whom I have learned much.

Dembski has stated that information is dynamic, passing in, through and out of matter. Matter itself can be reduced to the information instantiated within its design, construction and function. “Anything that exhibits information needed at some point to be imparted with information. What causes information to undergo such dynamic transformation? . . . Energy.” Energy is always inferred from information and is the “causal glue” that connects items of information in an informational universe. Material energy is a form of energy but not the whole of energy as stated by Dembski. He asked if there are information transfers that transcend material media and take a nonmaterial form of energy for transmission. The question applies in the context of quantum tunneling which depends upon the material media of synaptic networks for transmission of information encoded with meaning and purpose within spike trains of impulses but cannot be reduced to the synaptic networks themselves. If the energy of an information relationship actualized within wave functions cannot be justified as being material then it must be nonmaterial.

January 26, 2021

Specified information that is encoded within the transmitted spike trains of action potentials emanates from the cognitive mind of a human or the Mind of God. Since humans were created with the unique capacity for advanced language the codes transmit linguistic information in multiple manifestations. These include concepts, intuition, dreams, visions, discernment, verbal communications and intentions. All are linked with cognitive or physical action. As with the Morse code, the codes must be learned over a lifetime and remembered, being archived in memory.

When reference is made to John 1: 1-3 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”) we see that the Mind of God is the ultimate Source of all information. He is the Sender of information actualized in all five levels in the creations by the Son, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Gitt identified the one prerequisite of information, that it must be in coded form, the neural patterns described by Penfield. For human beings it is a linguistic code, and the essential aspect of all information is its mental content. The recipient evaluates the message after decoding it, and the code must be known both to the sender and the receiver if the information is to be understood. Matter cannot generate codes. A thinking being exercising free will, cognition and creativity is required. Gitt concluded that there is no known natural law by which matter can give rise to novel information. Neither can any physical process nor material phenomenon do this. Only a mind, including the Mind of God, can generate information, but in our space-time it may require material media for actualization, transmission or storage. Neurons of the human brain serve as the medium for both the transmission and storage of information.