This publication is the third part of the series, the beginning of which is here . If you are not familiar with the beginning of the story, then you may not understand at all what this text does here.

The situation is, in fact, ambiguous. On the one hand, this chapter is an absolutely necessary element of the construction of an information philosophy, but on the other hand, the stated material has no direct relation to information technologies. If you are not sure what exactly is the mood now to dive into the outlandish and viscous topic of philosophical justifications, it is possible to scroll further. Then, while reading the next chapters (when they are posted), if you suddenly wonder what that “situational-dependent rationale” is, with which I do terrible things, you can return to this chapter.

Chapter 3. Foundations

In a good way, it was necessary to begin a story with a reason. Without them, the previous reasoning turned out to be slightly suspended in the void. But if I started with the grounds, then the reader would most likely not be obvious why such a strange creepiness is needed, and as a result this most important material would remain unacceptable.

What are bases, and why are they needed?

Philosophical foundations are a tool to evaluate statements for their reliability and, therefore, applicability when the cost of a mistake is too high.

Everything that we can assert can be clearly divided into three classes of statements (for details and justification, see Ludwig Wittgenstein in The Logical and Philosophical Treatise):

1. Tautologies are statements that are always true regardless of any circumstances. The peculiarity of tautologies is that their area of ​​absolute truthfulness is tightly closed to their own domain of definition. For example, the statement “rain will go or will not go” is always true, but it doesn’t tell us anything about whether to expect rain today. Tautologies are not necessarily useless. For example, all logic and all mathematics are in their essence tautologies, but when you add non-tautological statements to them, they become valuable working tools.
   
   
2. Self - contradictions are statements that are always false, regardless of any circumstances. They also cannot be used to determine whether it will rain or not.
   
   
3. Facts are statements that are true and false. If (that is, when) the fact is true, and we know it, we can use it productively, especially if we correctly pick it up with some useful tautology such as logic or mathematics. If (that is, when) the fact is false, but we consider it true, we incur losses.

The situation is quite dramatic. We can indulge ourselves with pure tautologies, reveling in their truth, but there will be no benefit to us from this, except for self-gratification. We can entertain the public by self-contradiction, but we will not get any useful information from them. All our useful knowledge about anything is facts that, in principle, do not possess the property of being absolutely reliable.

It turns out that all our useful knowledge is unreliable, and all our reliable knowledge is useless in itself, and becomes useful only when we add something unreliable to it? Yes, it turns out that way. This state of affairs does not suit us at all, if only because the statement that all our useful knowledge is unreliable is in itself tautological, and any productive use of it happens only when we add the “applying” fact to it. And adding a fact gives the statement that useful knowledge is unreliable, a property of fact. That is, the ability to be true and false.

If we formulate the task as “to find a way to identify a situation in which the statement about the impossibility of useful knowledge to be reliable” is false, then this will be the task of searching for philosophical grounds.

The most popular ways to get a reason:

1. Reaching consensus. If everyone agrees that the water is wet and the earth is flat, then we consider this to be reliable facts. A sort of shameless exploitation of human conformism, especially "effective" in combination with violence.
   
   
2. Finding a reputable source. This approach can be particularly clearly illustrated by the example of “book” religions — Judaism (the Torah and other books, the truth of which is not disputed), Christianity (the Bible), Islam (the Koran), and others like them, including communism (the works of the classics of Marxism- Leninism). The weakness of this approach is that the more facts are accepted into the bases, the less total reliability is obtained as a result, and then there is an urgent need for interpreters, whose activities inflate and loosen the bases even more. Accumulated contradictions, as a rule, have to be resolved through violence.
   
   
3. Finding a compact primary fact. The experience of such gaining is especially well described by Rene Descartes in his Discourse on the Method .... Bravely plunging into total skepticism, Descartes discovered that the only indisputable fact that he has is “I think, therefore I exist.” Building a huge and majestic construction of reliable knowledge on this seemingly ridiculous foundation was an extremely subtle, complex and tedious task, but, admittedly, world science coped well with it. What is interesting, without the use of violence to achieve consensus.

Before moving on, I will not deny myself the pleasure of demonstrating that Cartesian "I think, therefore I am," for all its obvious truth, is not a tautology, but a fact that may be false. Suppose I made a device that tracks if I'm still alive or not. As soon as he recognizes that I am completely dead, he will send me my email address book with the following content: “Hello, dear friends! I regret to inform you that I <have substituted the date and time> have died, and from now on I definitely do not think and do not exist. With respect and wishes for a long life, A.M. ”. Available technology is already enough to make such a device. If everything went the way I would have arranged, then when my final would come, my correspondents would receive a letter from me (namely from me, because the instrument is only a means of deferred delivery), which contains my statement that I do not think and do not exist. And in this particular case, this statement would be true. In the circumstance that I, by my action (the manufacture of the instrument), reach out to a future that I cannot reach to myself in a living form — there is nothing strange in it. To reach out to something in space (for example, through a telephone) or in time is the most common thing for us. Thus, “I think, therefore I exist” is precisely a fact that can be both true and false.

Much to our regret, not everything that we need to substantiate the provisions of the philosophy of information can be derived from Descartes “think, exist”. Some things can be deduced (for example, the concept of an information spacesuit and the arguments accompanying this concept about the limitations of our own world), but this is not enough for us. Even the “signal-context” construction cannot be deduced from “thinking, existing” since the very fact of thinking includes the reality of all contexts existing inside thinking. Forcing out contexts beyond the brackets of reasoning (into “thinking”) leads to the fact that the entire information phenomenon has to be carried out into a signal, and there it is hopelessly reified. This, by the way, suggests some thoughts about why the question of searching for the material foundations of consciousness has become an unsolvable task for the existing scientific paradigm. In addition, from "I think I exist "cannot be deduced the statement" not only I think, "which is necessary at least for considering the act of communication. We have no choice but to replace the usual and comfortable “I think, I exist” to invent another principle for the search for the bases of reliable knowledge.

As a simple test to test the reliability of the grounds, you can use the so-called "crazy argument." "Crazy Argument"I call the assumption that everything that happens around me: my whole life, all events, everything with whom I communicate is all the fruit of my most severe mental disorder, and in fact I am nothing but an absolutely unspeakable creature , screwed with straps to the bed in a psychiatric hospital in a completely different way than I can imagine, arranged by the Universe. If the justification does not stop working even with such a monstrous assumption, it is reliable. Cartesian "I think, I exist" maintains this "crazy argument", and, consequently, any theory directly based on it can withstand it. In search of an alternative method of justification, we just need to achieve the same result.

Situational-dependent grounds

The main idea that I will use to derive the foundations of the philosophy of information will be to abandon the search for Absolute Truths. Instead, it is proposed to build on the problem being solved and each time display sets of bases, the reliability of which will be purely local, solely within the framework of the problem being solved. This approach is nothing more than the implementation of an instrumental approach to philosophizing, applied to the problem of finding grounds. We will have to pay for this pleasure by the fact that as grounds we will receive not one single product perfect in all respects, which is worth perpetuating on the tablets, but a tool that allows us to receive products according to our needs, the perfection of which will also take place, but it will always be perfect. purely local. Using the common analogy,

Imagine that you are in the supermarket scored products, and now standing in line at the cashier. As long as there is an opportunity, one can philosophize about the illusiveness of what is happening. For example, about the fact that the supermarket, the girl at the checkout, and the purchased products - all this is nothing more than a combination of signals that come to our brains through the visual, auditory and other nerves. You can also speculate that money is just a convention, and from the point of view of the true structure of the universe are rare nonsense. But the queue is coming up, and instead of abstract reasoning about the illusiveness of money, the question “Did I not forget my wallet at home?” Becomes much more relevant. When we are inside the situationsale and purchase, the general question “Does money exist?” receives an unequivocal answer “unequivocally yes” and is replaced by a more private question “do they exist in a pocket or at home?”. So, inside the situation of buying and selling, we can always add to our true fact “I think, exist” that the fact that “money exists” is true in this particular moment. Of course, we can continue our metaphysical research and, ignoring the salesperson’s questioning look, do not go inside the sale and purchase situation, as a result of which we go home without food.

Imagine that you are participating in a chess tournament. If you really came to participate, and not just troll others abstruse metaphysics, then the condition of entry into the situation“Chess tournament” will be the recognition of the existence of not only his own “I”, but also the fact of the existence of chess, as well as the rules of the game in them. As well as the existence of the tournament and its rules. You may be slowly trying to break the rules (a powerful smartphone with a good chess program immediately raises the level to the master of sports), and perhaps it will even get away with it. But this will not in the least annul either the fact of the existence of rules, nor the fact [unsuccessful attempt] of their violation.

The principle of situational-dependent justification is thatif in some situation we try to talk about it and try to ensure that this speaking makes sense, we can safely include the fact of the existence of the situation itself, the fact of being inside it, the fact of speaking (thinking) about it and the facts the existence of those entities without which this situation is impossible .

It may seem that, by opening the way to situational-dependent primary facts, we are giving the green light to intellectual licentiousness, which will inevitably lead to the possibility of justifying anything. Yes, situationally-dependent primary facts are a dangerous tool, but it becomes dangerous only when illiterately used. There are two simple rules that make the use of this tool useful and safe:

1. When the primary fact is successfully adopted and very productively used for one situation, it may be tempting to slightly absolutize it and use it when reasoning about other situations. This is not necessary. The primary fact should not go beyond the situation or set of situations for which it is derived. For example, even if a chess tournament has a cash prize fund, the inclusion in this situation of the concept of “money”, which is introduced for sale and purchase situations, is not correct, because in the “money game” situation, this same money does not play the same the role that is assigned to them in the sale. Even though these are essentially the same paper currency notes. But if there are contractual paid parties in the tournament, then a purchase and sale appears in the situation of the tournament,
   
   
2. Do not recognize as primary those facts that, although desirable within the situation, but without which the situation is still possible. For example, I can speak about the date of birth of a person in terms of the signs of the zodiac (for this I am obliged to take them as primary facts), but this will in no way prevent me as a basic working hypothesis to consider all astrology from beginning to end just a literary genre , the essence of which lies in the composing of ill-starred pseudo-prophetic texts.

Careless handling of any methods of philosophical justification gives a disgusting result. Even the conceptual beauty and ideological purity of the fact “I think, I exist” did not prevent Rene Descartes from immediately introducing several obvious, but very far from solid, assumptions, and as a result receive a “proof” of the existence of God quite far from beauty and purity.

Despite the wealth of situations and, accordingly, the primary facts derived from them, this technique is resistant to the “crazy argument.” Indeed, my existence inside the situation “supermarket, groceries, cash, money” implies the existence of the primary fact “money” regardless of whether I physically have a place in the queue at the cashier of a supermarket, or is it just my sick mind.

Tied to the idea of "inside the situation"the method of philosophical substantiation is a logical consequence of the instrumental approach to philosophizing, that is, the basis of the method described in the introduction. If the reasoning had been undertaken by us to establish absolute truth (“the most general laws of the world order”), then the situational-dependent rationale, of course, would be completely unsuitable. But if our activity is aimed at developing tools suitable for solving specific tasks, then we are completely entitled to push off from the fact of the existence of these tasks, and from the very fact of our need for suitable tools.

Use of situational justifications

Each time, for each specific situation, it is too expensive to derive the bases “from scratch” and build all the chains. Especially given the fact that situations tend to change almost every minute. Therefore, it makes sense to immediately develop a set of techniques that allow you to display statements that, although they will not claim to be absolute truths (we had to abandon them as soon as we became involved in the situation), but would still be applied quite widely.

Mining Facts

Suppose we find out that for a particular situation a certain fact is primary. From this it follows that if we scatter away from this fact and decide to assume that “this is all nonsense, it really does not exist,” then we will automatically close the opportunity to adequately consider the specific situation for which this fact is primary, as well as all her kind. The next time we dismiss something else, then more, and eventually we come to the fact that the range of issues for which we can have primary facts, pulled into a point, degenerated and actually ceased to exist. And all this is because, for the primary fact found for one situation, we just found another situation in which this fact can never be primary.

Consider the following two statements:

1. "Cinderella fairy made a carriage from a pumpkin"
2. "Cinderella fairy made a carriage from the head of the stepmother"

In order to be able to say at least something about these sets of letters, we must accept the existence of Cinderella, fairies, and other very doubtful things as primary facts. On the one hand, we, of course, remember that these are all inventions, but on the other hand we can say for sure that the first statement is true, and the second is false. But how can the fact of the interaction of two non-existent objects be true? Yes, of course, in the world that we call real, the same Cinderella, driving around on a pumpkin carriage, never existed. But is this a sufficient reason to forever deny Cinderella to the existence in the strictest way, thereby tightly closing the opportunity for itself to discuss the plot of this very good fairy tale? It is simply unwise. It would be wiser to realize

The case, of course, is not limited to Cinderella. Under the knife of negation described here, such things as soul, life, thinking, meaning, purpose, freedom, love, and another huge list of what to properly speak about would be not only useful, but absolutely vital.

Extraction of primary facts works according to the following algorithm:

1. We consider the situation in which we need to be able to build meaningful statements.
2. We calculate the primary facts that occur in this situation.
3. We learn to operate with these primary facts, without reflecting on the fact that “but in fact, all this does not exist.” There is no single, eternal, and unchanging "matter itself." There are situations in which we fall and within which we must be able to navigate.

And, of course, it is very desirable to be able not to drag in cinderellas, fairies, devils, gods, and even freedom, thinking, goals and meanings there (that is, inside those situations) where they are not.

A separate, very serious nuance lies in the fact that from the essence of the situation it is possible to extract not only primary reliable facts, but also primary unreliable facts. That is, those who are obliged within the situation to have the logical possibility of being both true and false. Consider, for example, the situation when I try to find out what the weather will be like tomorrow. Specifically, will it rain all day? Primarily reliable (true) facts in this situation will be “tomorrow will surely come” and “some weather will definitely be”. But the primary reliable facts are not quite everything that I have inside the situation in question. My activity in finding the answer to my question is built around the fact that while I am inside this situation, I do n’t knowwhether it will rain tomorrow. The existence of a question and the uncertainty of the answer to it are logically necessary conditions for finding inside the situation of a search for an answer.

Thus, a set of initially reliable (true or false) facts and a set of initially unreliable facts can be attributed to the situation. By the criterion of "reliability", a clear and unambiguous separation of the sets of facts within a situation takes place. The fact inside the situation is present either as a necessary statement or as an open question.

A very interesting case is an open mathematical problem. In general, mathematics is essentially a tautology, in which all statements present are either absolutely true or absolutely false. But there are a number of statements about which we do not know whether they are true or false. For example, now one of such problems is the Riemann hypothesis about the zeros of the zeta function. Due to the tautological nature of mathematics, the answer, of course, is present, and it is one. But he is now unknown. Therefore, the best mathematical minds of the world are struggling with this riddle, looking for this answer. They are satisfied with any of the options - and "yes, true" and "no, false." In the “search for proof” situation, the hypothesis about the zeros of the zeta function is an open question, but as soon as the proof is found, the hypothesis will cease to be a hypothesis, and this statement will become a proven theorem

Finding situations

Suppose, through the operation of extracting facts, we received a statement of some kind with the obligatory addition “primary reliable” or “open question”. Now we can start the process in the opposite direction and calculate the situations in which this fact is present. If we have learned to operate with the obtained facts, it means that we have learned to reason adequately in all situations in which this fact is present. Moving from facts to situations, one can even find not just individual situations, but whole classes of situations. As a result, any theory that has a justification through the found primary facts will be reliable inside any situation relating to a class.

It seems to me that the practice of artificially constructing primary facts for finding situations in which these facts are present exactly as given seems rather curious and reasonably useful. For example, in the example described above with the device reporting my death I took this way: I took our usual primary reliable true fact “I think, therefore I exist” and came up with a situation in which this fact is primary unreliable. The unreliability in this case is ensured by the fact that I can’t guarantee that the device will not give false positives, and therefore, in the prepared letter, it would still be good to say that the reported fact still needs to be rechecked for reliability.

In principle, when operating with artificial facts, it can happen that the desired set of situations will be empty. For example, for the statement "Harry Potter exists" there is a class of situations in which it is primarily a true fact (the world of the Harry Potter tale) and there is a class of situations in which the statement is initially false (outside the world of the fairy tale), but to think of a situation in which This statement is an open question, I can not.

It can be argued that if we learn to tack carefully from situations to primary facts and vice versa, to situations and their classes, then we will be able to get theories that have the highest reliability.

Objective reality

When we begin to apply situationally-based justifications, in our country something strange begins to happen with objective reality. That same reality, which must exist in addition to our fantasies and desires. The reality that we dream to know and on which we want to influence.

First, objective reality ceases to be a single entity. Having got into one situation and deduced from it a set of primary facts, we get a reality that does not necessarily have to somehow correlate with the picture of the world derived from the primary facts of another situation. The classic concept of a single, indivisible, eternal Being ceases to be something fundamental and becomes more historical curiosity than a working tool.

Secondly, very strange entities begin to penetrate into such a strangely fragmented objective reality. Those that we in the objective reality did not expect. For example, Cinderella with a fairy and a pumpkin carriage. Of course, all these strange entities are reliably locked in those reservations, of which they don’t have a turn, but the very fact of the penetration of such wonders into the sacredly protected reality cannot at first not be shocked.

The rigidity of the concept of a single and indivisible objective reality has already led to the fact that whole layers of the most burning ideological issues have been thrown into the muddy swamp of agnosticism. Not being able to assert an objective existence within the framework of the indivisible Being of those objects with which we have to deal with every second, we got a rampant obscurantism and intellectual laxity, monstrous in its scale. An association with a girl comes to mind, who agrees to link her life only with the ideal in all respects claimant to the hand and heart, and while such characters are not observed for some reason, she is confused with each counter-cross.

In the next chapters, we will have to learn to operate with very unusual entities, which would be impossible to assert the existence of which in one Being. The concept of “context” that was very controversial from the point of view of total objective reality was only the beginning. If materialistic science can somehow (obviously, worse and worse every year) be satisfied with the Procrustean bed of single Being, then the metaphysical system, claiming to be called the philosophy of information, cannot afford the luxury of ignoring the bizarre and sometimes contradictory world of intangible objects. In such conditions, the only alternative to the rejection of the indivisibility of objective reality would be only a complete separation from any reality and unconditional surrender to mysticism. Surrender will not be. There will be a fragmented objective reality

Revision traversed

It’s time now, having received the rationale methodology, to go over the two previous chapters (I omit the introduction and a brief history of the question, since there is nothing to justify) and, with the utmost degree of annoyance, to get used to the dubious allegations there.

Dualism: The Book Metaphor

1. What was my right to speak of a book as a material object? How do I know that all these "mass", "volume", some mysterious "chemical properties" and so on really exist, and not conjured by malicious demons or crazy creators of virtual reality worlds?
   
   If I need to move the cabinet, and I don’t have enough strength to lift it along with the books, then I need to physically unload the books from the cabinet. In this situation, books are considered as material objects that have mass and occupy space in space. Regardless of whether the reality is real or virtual, I am inside the situation “you need to move the cabinet”. Thus, the fact “a book as a material object” takes place at least within one situation, and therefore we have the right to talk about it.
   
   
2. By what right, I decided that the book - an intangible object? The book is after all exclusively material object! It has an objective existence, independent of our consciousness and knowledge about it. “To exist objectively” is a property of matter, and only of matter, and everything else exists only subjectively, that is, unreliable, unprovable, elusive, and unworthy of attention. (I'm sorry, I reproduced the standard train of thought of the dialectical materialists)
   
   For the extraction of this fact will not go far. You, the reader (yes, yes, you personally are in your “here and now”) are inside the “reading a book” situation. This is the very book. Let's see which primary fact is an integral part of this situation. The existence of me is definitely not, because it is self-evident only for me, but for you it does not stand the test of a “crazy argument.” Anyway, maybe right now (in your “now”) I sleep deeply, and therefore I do not think. Or already died, and in general as a living organism I do not exist. Perhaps the primary fact will be the existence of the surface from which you read the letters? She, of course, desirable, but not required. If you are listening to this book, then there is no surface. We reject as desirable, but not obligatory. Maybe your ability to understand this book? Needless to say yes but this is not enough. Need something else. Need the text of this book. The same text that you read. Without it in any way. If there is no text, then this is no longer a reading of the book. It turns out that you can safely add such a thing as the text of the book to the list of primary facts you currently have. The text of the book may exist and may not exist, but it is now that it most effectively exists.
   
   The necessity of operating with non-material entities arises not only within the situation of reading a book, but also within any situation where we sometimes need to know something about the matter that we cannot reach at the moment. Even if I looked out the window, saw falling drops and decided to take an umbrella, this umbrella is useful to me not to protect from those drops that I saw (they already have time to fall), but completely from other drops. Water molecules - matter, but when I looked out the window, I was not interested in them, but in the intangible object “the answer to the question of whether it is raining now.”

Dualism: the totality of physical reality

Why did I tied material reality exclusively to physical space? What about time?

Space is a very convenient container for objects that are “not me”. And even for such a special subject as “my body”. And time is a bad repository. Objects whose place is exclusively in the past no longer exist (only traces of them exist in the present), and those that are exclusively in the future do not exist yet (only intentions or predictions exist that are in the present). If in space I can move and place my “here” next to the place occupied by the subject of interest, then I am firmly locked in the “now”. Time is an extremely interesting from a metaphysical point of view, the essence and within the framework of the philosophy of information, we will definitely talk about it, but what is important now is that from the point of view of working as a container for the existence of objects, it is an extremely unfortunate option.

Dualism: the totality of the information reality

In the discourse on the worlds of the subjects, it was blatantly postulated that there are other creatures besides me, and my information spacesuit does not coincide with their information suits. Is it reckless? Maybe the information spacesuit is one for all?

When we are inside the “communication” situation, we should recognize as the primary fact the existence of the one with whom we communicate. In some situations, at least some reliable knowledge of what “real” the interlocutor is is sometimes difficult to obtain (the interlocutor of “linda” with a cat on an avatar may turn out to be a bearded man or even a software bot), but the very fact of having an interlocutor inside the situation “communication "Indisputable.

The hypothesis of the unity of all information spacesuits is refuted by the fact that we may find ourselves inside a situation where some of the entities present inside our spacesuit are present, and some are not present inside the spacesuit of the creature with whom we communicate (the situation of “communication with the dog”). And the assumption that the spacesuit of a dog is a subset of ours is not provable and not refuted, since both for the proof and for the refutation it is necessary to go beyond the limits of your own world, and this cannot be done.

Dualism: the totality of the inseparability of realities

A picture with two axes (material and non-material) follows logically from the totality and difference of two realities. It seems to have dealt with totality, but why should they be different? Maybe they are still not different, and if somehow slyly carry out the third axis, will it immediately hook everything that we need?

The whole family of situations in which we can get inside can be divided into those in which the existence of objects in space and situations in which the specifics in space is not essential is essential for us. When you need to find the key to the house ("Lord, in which pocket did I put it?"), The spatial position of the desired object is essential. Therefore, inside such situations, the existence of a physical space is postulated exactly as the “material” axis is drawn. This immediately gives us the necessity of the material axis exactly as it is. Even if we are extremely cleverly spend the other axis, still there should be at least two axes. And two times, it means they are different.

In general, a picture with two axes is bad because there are two axes there. In an amicable way, there should be more, since the same subject can often be viewed from different points of view. The material (spatial) aspect is, of course, one, since we have one single container for the existence of matter. But intangible aspects can be as much as we have enough imagination. Here and cognitive value, and monetary value, and aesthetic, and anything else. All this wealth had to be reduced to one conditional "information" scale solely in order to at least somehow depict it in a two-dimensional figure.

Dualism: reification

And, actually, why should we be afraid of this thing? Maybe the reification, especially when it is properly done - this is exactly what you should dream?

Similar to the previous paragraph, we only take situations in which the presence of physical space is not required. In such situations, the postulation of the presence of physical space as a container (and, therefore, the requirement that the objects in question take place in it) would be a violation of the principle “do not drag anything into the primary facts from the essence of the situation”.

The existence of information: signals and contexts

1. How about no signal information?
   
   If inside the situation there are only primary reliable facts, then it is completely defined, and no additional “inbound” is needed. But, unfortunately, this situation is completely self-tautologically closed. No entry, no exit. Isolated system. Practical interest is not. Practical interest arises when there are open-ended questions within the situation. And when an open question appears, it becomes necessary to understand what can happen to it and how. The signal is something that is received from outside the situation, which leads to changes in the open-ended question. Or it gives an unequivocal answer, and then the situation ends and turns into another situation, in which the fact that figured in the form of an open question becomes the first reliable fact, or gives clarification, but does not completely close the question.
   
   Considering any situation with open questions, we must assume the existence of signals that affect the openness of open questions.
   
   
2. How about information without context?
   
   In a situation with an open question, this most open question is the context, which, since we postulated the openness of the question, cannot but be.
   
   
3. Perhaps, besides the signal and the context, should I add something else?
   
   May be. The signal-contextual construct is just a tool. If it can be improved, then why not?

Existence of Information: Measuring Information

1. Who said Shannon's formula is correct?
   
   The formula can not be wrong. Incorrect may be its use.
   
   
2. But maybe the determinists are right, and all the information about the whole past, present and future of the Universe does exist objectively somewhere?
   
   Suppose it is. Let us accept the existence of this information (probably, all the same data) as a primary reliable fact and try to imagine a situation characterized by this primary fact. The first thing you can pay attention to is that the subject in this situation knows with absolute precision all its future. Therefore, a decision-making situation is impossible for him (all decisions have already been made and are already known to him). The resulting situation is completely devoid of open questions and, therefore, the context of the subject is equal to zero. That is, the subject has a comprehensive signal, but has no context for interpreting this signal. The resulting hypothetical omniscient subject, although it exists (it was under him, we constructed the situation), but categorically unable to think.
   
   Do not be surprised that having pushed away from the idea of ​​pandeterminism, we immediately came to the idea of ​​an omniscient being. With the same success it would be possible, having pushed off from an omniscient being, to go out on pandeterminism. In its essence, both vulgar materialism and monotheistic mysticism are two sides of the same absurdity.

The existence of information: "information" in physics

1. Where does such confidence come from that one cannot violate the law of conservation of energy with the help of Maxwell's witchcraft demon?
   
   If we are talking about the law of conservation of energy, then we are obliged to take the concept of “energy” precisely in the sense given to it in physics. And in physics, energy is, by definition, what is preserved during any transformations. The very consistency of the concept of "energy" in physics is a hypothesis, but so far we have all been lucky that if an imbalance of the sum of known types of energy was found, then there was always a new type of energy into which the difference came from or where it came from. In the situation of “theoretical physics”, the discovered violation of the law of energy conservation is a signal to search for a new type of energy. Hypothetically, of course, it is possible that when an imbalance is found, a new type of energy will not be found, but then it will mean that the concept of “energy” will have to be abandoned. In any case, in order to sound the alarm, we need a full-scale experiment, but
   
   
2. Why such confidence that the progress of physics will not finally lead to the discovery of the inforpood?
   
   See above about the meaninglessness of reification. Certainly, it will be repeatedly found that something which, in the heat of the moment, will want to be considered the material basis of information. In this situation, I would suggest that we already know thousands of ways with which we can put a signal into matter, and consider the newly found phenomenon as a plus one of them.

The existence of information: data

The definition of the concept of "information object" through the involvement of the concept of "Internet" - is it too cool?

This is not a definition, but only a criterion that can sometimes be useful.

Chapter Summary

Further the degree of madness will only increase. The only way to keep within the bounds of reality and not to embark on a meaningless flight of unrestricted thought can only be a good habit to hold on to firmly solid foundations with all our strength.

The main concepts and concepts considered are:

1. Philosophical basis as a way to distinguish reliable concepts from fantasy divorced from reality.
2. “Crazy Argument” as a tool to test the foundation of reliability.
3. Primary fact as a non-tautological statement, the truth of which is taken for granted. There are various approaches to solving the problem of acquiring primary facts, and the situational-dependent rationale is one of them.
4. The essence of the situation-dependent rationale is that if we consider a question, then either we can accept the fact of the existence of this question as a primary fact, or we must recognize this our activity as meaningless.
5. Primary facts can be clearly divided into primary true facts and primary unreliable facts.
6. Rules of situational-based justification (they should be remembered and strictly applied):
   
   
   • Refusal to absolutize. Situational-dependent justification is unsuitable for the search for Absolute Truths. Everything derived from situationally dependent primary facts is valid only within the framework of the considered situation (or class of situations).
   • The list of primary facts is allowed to take only that without which the situation under consideration is definitely impossible. The correct primary fact must stand the test of the “crazy argument.”
7. Instrumental techniques that are useful when applying situational-based justifications:
   
   
   • Mining facts. A primary situationally dependent fact cannot be rejected only on the basis that there are situations (other situations) in which it is definitely a lie.
   • Search for situations. Constructing a situation in which a given statement (or a set of them) is a primary fact. Useful for clarifying the boundaries of the situation in question and searching for the interdependencies of primary facts.
8. Objective reality has ceased to be one and indivisible. When applying situationally-based justifications, it becomes the norm that a situation occurs when those things that are undoubtedly real in one situation are necessarily absent in another situation.

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Continued: Chapter 4. Systems