Divine Information

Barbour, Peacocke and Sharpe make use of the idea that God interacts with the world via the 'communication of information'. Such a notion is seen as fertile ground because conservation laws need not be violated - a perennial problem for accounts of Divine action. It's common to see the triplet of "matter, energy and information" listed as the basic units of reality, and we often think of information as somehow disconnected from the other two and not subject to the same laws. However, it seems to me that information is always and only realised in physical states. When found in such a triplet, I believe information is a synonym for the pattern, organization, or structure of matter/energy. Certainly it deserves to be elevated up with the other two, but the same laws bind all three. As I understand it, in order for God to "input information", matter/energy must be reorganized - by definition. It has been suggested that since God is omnipresent, no energy is required for such communication,, but I don't see how this helps. Sharpe sees nonlocality as a means to impart the information without disrupting conservation, but the universe still needs to found in a state that is different from what we had expected, if we are to then claim that God was effective temporally. If the temporal dimension is given up, it seems we are left with Deism.

I should say that both Peacocke and Barbour are careful to state that information is only ever realised in physical states during coding, transmission, and decoding, and that it should not be seen "in purely static terms, as if the message where the pattern itself". Peacocke adds; "No information flows without some exchange of energy and/or matter."I agree. If this is acknowledged, I don't think it is entirely fair to present the 'communication of information' route for Divine action as uniquely immune to interventionism critiques.

It seems to me that we sometimes use the word 'information' to mean quite different things. Sometimes we mean organization or structure - this is always physically instantiated. Sometimes we mean the input to an information-processing system. This input can vary from an unambiguously rich and clear signal, to pure noise. Once again, this input is physically instantiated. Finally, we sometimes mean an abstract concept as in 'the BRCA1 gene'. In this case we recognise that information as structure can be generalized. Information in this last sense is 'multiply realisable', as is the case for computer languages and human languages to some extent. When discussing information, it’s very helpful to specify in what sense we are using the term.

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