On Language and The World

The idea of a symbolic system is that one thing is used to represent another thing
which it is not. Letters are used to make words. Words refer to things which they are
not. Grammar is the set of rules for stringing together the words to make intelligible
statements about something else, i.e. the world (the fact that we are part of the world is
significant; the “out there” is an idea, not a fact. One part of the world, the language
speakers, is distinguishing itself from the rest.)

So the operation of distinction and relation is facilitated by language. The

processes, things interacting, go on in “the world.” We describe these processes. The
relation of language to the thing it describes is metaphorical, even when we intend it to
be literal. The processes, the things, are NOT the language. Language is to the things it
represents like a photograph is to the scene. Language calls our attention to an aspect
of the world for our viewing, consideration, study. Thus, there is always an “object of
study,” the particular thing we are attending to, and the “language” to describe it.

On the one hand, the world (including us), on the other hand language, our
symbolic system for understanding, manipulating, interacting with “the world.” And of
course language is part of “the world.” We are never outside of the world. Language has
the peculiar tendency to give us the impression that we are distinct from the world it
describes. The distinction, between word and world, is indeed real, but only as an idea.
In the world, which includes us, there is only being, the billions of atoms and molecules
interacting constantly. Our language, our talking, is one of the ways we capture the
being as we go along being part of it. We are never outside it, even though we tend to
think we are.

Thus the enormous power of ideas, and of language, to make things happen.
Ideas belong to the intelligible world, and so does language. Again, “intelligible world”
does not mean something separate from “the world” in fact, but only as a distinction.
Ideas exist in the world. Namely, ideas exist because brains exist. Ideas don’t exist in
brains, but because of them. Without neural processes we wouldn’t have ideas. But this
doesn’t mean that ideas are the neural processes. Ideas are representations of aspects
of the world (particular objects of study) which animals with brains are able to
accomplish. The mental representations give the animals who have them the ability to
take directed action in the world for their own benefit. This ability, the ability to have
ideas, increases with the development of the more and more complex brain. The ability
to have ideas is clearly an evolutionary gain. Are we humans the only creatures that
have ideas? Does a spider have an “idea” of a web before it sets out to construct it?
Looks like it to me. So the answer is no, we humans are not alone in having ideas.
 But with language the power of ideas takes a quantum leap. With language comes
the intelligible world, the world of ideas (not separate from the world) which enables the
beings who have it to create systems of order that did not exist before, and impose
these systems on the world. With language comes political systems, philosophy,
science, history, religion (god save us), and the rest of ways we, the language users,
can construct a mental order to better understand and control our existence. We create
the intelligible world for ourselves, and then remake the world according to our ideas of
what it should be. But from the point of view of being, ideas are just another way of the
the world making itself, which it does constantly, with the never ceasing collision of
atoms, whether these atoms are simple carbon molecules, elephant skin, or neural
processes.

The world has ideas, through us (among other animals), and ideas exist as clearly
as trees and lakes and clouds exist (they have power to act and be acted upon). But
ideas, again, are NOT the things they represent, nor are they within them. Chemical
processes, for example, are not, in themselves, ideas, and in no way contain them. We
can and do represent these chemical processes with ideas, but we do this for ourselves,
for understanding, for knowledge. Chemical interactions go on without our ideas of
them, which is obvious, but for the confusion which occurs when “thinking” gets
projected onto the entities which clearly do not think. For example, when biologists
describe the operations of DNA, the content of DNA is often referred to as “information.”

Is this precise language? What is information? Information is the data that can be
gathered about an object, accessible to all who turn their attention to the matter, and
desire to be “informed”. Information is ideas. Information describes an object in some
way, using language or numbers, or some form of symbols. Information is NOT the
thing it describes. It is neutral. Nor does Information render the object it describes.
Information does not do anything. Information stands in relation to the object it
describes, or defines, as the definition stands to the word. Finally, information is for
MINDS. What good would a door or a bed post do with information?

Now to the matter at hand, or as I prefer to think of it, the object of study.

To say that life makes things by means of genes, and that these genes operate as
“information” is to confuse two operations in the natural world. Human beings use
“information” because we are the beings who make a distinction between the object on
the one hand, and talking about the object, or thinking about it, on the other. Information
relates to the second operation. Information is not the object, nor is it somehow in the
object. Information is the mental data which the mind collects concerning the object of
study.

In what way can information be part of a gene, which in itself clearly does not
possess mind? Does a gene “consider” its operations before acting on them? Of course
not. Genes are simply molecules which function in a certain way; namely, they program
the construction of proteins. Because they themselves stand outside the operation,
once the “program” has been released to an Mrna molecule, does that justify the word
information being applied to the code, the order of nucleotides, that gets transfered in a
chemical exchange between a segment of dna, the particular gene being expressed,
and the rna that carries the copy to a ribosome for protein synthesis? What has taken
place is not a transfer of information but a series of precise chemical reactions.

There is a tendency among scientists to confuse natural operations with mental

operations, because they see a similarity of function. We must always be very careful
when encountering this kind of misapplication of language, because the implications are
huge, particularly for understanding the object of study. We want to allow the scientist
his subject, since he is the expert, (in this case in the field of molecular biology) but do
we, or does he, for that matter, really want to attribute mind to a gene? Or do we really
want to say that there is mind in Nature, other than humans? We have (above) defined
mind as the mental operations of a being who has language. Information is a product of
language, not chemistry. A gene is a molecule, a chemical structure, with a particular
chemical function, and should be described as such, and not as a self-conscious or
intentional entity of any kind. If the object of study is information, we are talking about
interactions between human beings, about knowledge. If the object of study is the gene,
we are talking about organic forms and their interactions, not mental processes. We are
the ones who have the mental processes.

Anthropomorphic tendencies should be avoided in all objects of study, except, of

course, those studies which exclusively apply to us. We are the ones who speak. We
are the ones who distinguish objects in the world, name them, and describe their
relations. Nature doesn’t do any of this, except through us. In Nature is no time, no
separation, no point of view, no “mentality”. Nature is atoms bouncing around, joining up
here, separating there, making this creature and that, making a volcano and the ocean
surrounding it, making a songbird sing at dawn, making dawn, making each and every
gene in each and every genome originate and keep track of its creature, allowing a
mistake now and then for novelty, but mainly keeping the order intact.

But Nature does not, and cannot, make information. Information is a handy word to
describe certain objects of thought. Nature doesn’t have objects of thought; we do. And
scientists should quit asserting that it does.

Dan Duncan, Spring, 2008