What is information?

Levin Georgii Dmitrievich Doctor of Philosophy Leading Researcher; Department of the Theory of Knowledge; Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 117534, Russia, Moscow, Chertanovskaya str., 47, bldg. 2,, sq. 45 g.d.levin@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The state of the problem. The question "What is information?" is similar to the question "What is truth?" Pontius Pilate not only in grammatical form, but also in meaning for philosophy. That is why it is explored by different theories from different angles and in different terms. Each of these theories and terminological traditions has the right to exist only if it reveals an aspect of the subject they share that is not visible from other points of view. The purpose of the article is to show that the philosophical theory of information meets this criterion, and for its development, classical epistemological terminology, which has been perfected for centuries, is quite sufficient. That is why I will use the terminology of the philosophy of consciousness, which has not yet been fully formed, minimally.

The task of identifying a feature inherent in all types of information is not only extremely important for science, but also extremely difficult. This is evidenced by the fact that there are about a hundred definitions of the term "information" that differ in meaning ^[1]. The difficulty of this task is also evidenced by the "incredible but obvious" fact that the definitions of information given even by outstanding researchers contain grammatical, logical and even semantic inaccuracies. Here are just a few examples:

N. Wiener: "Information is information, not matter and not energy" [[2], p. 208]. The first part of this phrase is a tautology, and the second is a negative definition, which is considered an error in logic.

L. Brillouin: "Negentropy is equivalent to information" [[3], p.273]. But if "information" and "negentropy" are synonyms, then one of the terms is superfluous.

V.M. Glushkov: "Information in its most general sense is a measure of the heterogeneity of the distribution of matter and energy in space and time" ^[4]. But what is a measure? The unit of measurement? No? And what?

A.D. Ursul, the founder of Russian philosophical studies of information, believes that it "can be defined... as reflected diversity" [[5], p. 229]. According to the grammatical meaning of the words, it turns out that information is not a reflection, not an image of diversity, but diversity itself. This is hardly what the author wanted to say. His explanation does not help either: "Information is the variety that one object contains about another object" [[5], p. 229]. The italicized part of the phrase is meaningless, meaningless, therefore, the whole phrase.

In my opinion, there are two reasons for such "incredible but obvious" grammatical, logical and semantic inconsistencies. Firstly, all the cited authors are professional physicists and mathematicians. "Information" is a philosophical category. And just as physical professionalism is required to define categories of physics, philosophical professionalism is required to define information. And professionalism in one science does not replace professionalism in another. This was perfectly stated by the outstanding methodologist of science M. Weber, who wrote about the methodological arguments of the historian E. Mayer: they "can be likened to the diagnosis not of a doctor, but of the patient himself, and as such they should be appreciated and interpreted" [[6], p.416]. Without an anamnesis, i.e. a description of the disease by the patient himself, a professional medical diagnosis is impossible. And the philosophical answer to the question "What is information?" should be based on the answers given by representatives of specific sciences, but not limited to them.

The second reason for the inconsistencies being discussed is the incredible difficulty of the issue itself. And when the answer to it begins to "dawn" in the mind of the researcher, he seeks to express it, regardless of grammar, logic, or sometimes even the accuracy of meaning. The main thing now is to catch and fix the thought, everything else can be done later. This means that the reader, studying the existing definitions of information, is obliged to understand through all the grammatical, logical and even semantic inconsistencies of the text what the author has already understood and tried to say. With this methodological approach, I will approach the above formula of N. Wiener "Information is information, not matter and not energy" [[2], p.208].

What is pan-conformism? I'll start a little bit from afar. The term "i nformatio" was used by Cicero, but in Europe it became widely used only in the XV century, when the exchange of knowledge increased and there was a need for a term denoting not knowledge in itself, but knowledge transmitted from one person to another. In Russia, the need for such a term arose somewhat later, in the XVII century. Several candidates were proposed for his role: "news", "message", "information", "data", "information". The last term received a categorical meaning.

Originally, it meant ordinary knowledge expressed in language and transmitted from one person to another. But gradually the generality of this term grew. At first, his denotation included the knowledge exchanged by higher animals with subjective reality. Then it was recognized that information is exchanged by organisms that do not have a subjective reality, including plants and even viruses. The real revolution in the evolution of the term "information" was the discovery of genetic information. The expansion of his denotation reached its limit when it was stated that information and its transmission existed in inanimate nature before the emergence of life. Such an extremely general interpretation of information is called paninformism [[7], p. 223]. Researchers who are convinced that the history of information begins with the history of life on Earth are arguing with paninformists.

Objectivity and materiality. What has been said about the evolution of the term "information" is enough to return to Wiener's formula. First of all, it is clear that the author is a paninformist: he puts information on the same level as matter and energy. And how is information related to matter and energy? This is already a philosophical question, and in order to answer it, it is necessary to dissociate ourselves from the famous definition of matter given by V. I. Lenin: "matter is an objective reality given to us in sensation" [[8], p. 149]. Without knowing this definition, a student once could not even count on a top three, and even today it is mentioned by many as a matter of course. The fact is that all realists are convinced of the existence of objective reality: both materialists and objective idealists. They disagree on the question of what objective reality consists of, what is its primary substratum. Objective idealists are convinced that it is identical to the first substratum of subjective reality: it is an idea, a spirit, a thought, a consciousness. Materialists are convinced that it is different from the substrate of subjective reality and primary in relation to it. This puts them in front of a question that idealists are spared from.: what exactly is this primary substratum of the objective world, primary in relation to the subjective world and its primary substratum? Materialists have been trying to answer it since the time of Thales. Here is one of the modern answers: "The biggest optimists half-heartily accept that the bottom of matter has already been reached, and there is nowhere to go below photons, leptons and quarks, which supposedly create hadrons. Optimists simply admit another level of specific material substrates, with the expressed or back thought that it should be the last... For the third, the most promising is an index on which it says: "everything is a vacuum and everything is from a vacuum" [[8], pp. 246-247].

Lenin's amateurish confusion of the objectivity of the world with its materiality, elevated to the rank of the cornerstone of dialectical materialism, brought many troubles to Russian philosophy. If it is eliminated, it will become clear that the formation, which is neither matter nor energy, is objective, but not material. It does not consist of matter, but is connected with it. To understand this connection means to understand the nature of information. But for this it is necessary to concretize the idea of matter as the primary substrate of the objective world.

Hylomorphism and atomism. Within the framework of materialism, there are two understandings of the primordial substratum of the world - the continuous and the discrete. The continuum is represented by the Aristotelian doctrine of hylo-morphism (hylo - tree, then - matter, morphè- form), the discrete - by the atomism of Democritus. Based on the principles of hylomorphism, the first substratum of the world is thought of as a kind of formless mass, divisible to infinity. A pure form is introduced into this pure matter from the outside, and thus the primary formalized matter arises. Then the form is also introduced into it from the outside again, as a result, objects arise, for example, from clay - a jug, and as a result - the world as a whole.

But from the point of view of Democritus, the first substratum of the world is its further indivisible parts, atoms. The first objects arise as a result of the atoms becoming related to each other. The resulting first wholes come back into relationship with each other, and as a result, the world in all its diversity arises. The subject of research in hylomorphism and atomism is the same, there are different ways of describing it. Wiener's formula can be investigated on the basis of both. Let's try hylomorphism first.

It allows you to eliminate tautology from Wiener's formula. It turns out: information is form, not matter, and not energy. A natural question arises: why didn't Wiener himself make this very obvious clarification in his formula?

This clarification allows us to see the connection of information with matter and energy: information is a form introduced into matter by energy. However, philosophers, unlike physicists, prefer to talk not about energy, but about motion. Then it turns out: information is a form introduced into matter by movement. But the difference between these two formulations is not fundamental, since energy is traditionally understood as "a single common measure of qualitatively different forms of motion of matter, preserved during their mutual transformations" [[9]p. 563].

However, this is a narrow understanding of information, since not only objects have a form, but also processes. But I will simplify the task for myself: I will start by considering the information contained in the objects and translating the information, understood as transferring the form from one object to another object. A classic example of such a transfer, which has been discussed for more than two thousand years, is the impression of a seal on wax. At the same time, I use a genetic approach: I will start by exploring the simplest kind of objective information - the one that exists in inanimate nature. This will allow us to identify not only its specific features, but also the features common to it with information of higher types. After that, it remains only to identify the specific features of these latter.

There are three types of causation. Aristotle attached great importance to the transfer of form from one object to another. Even sensory cognition is interpreted by him as the transfer of form from a cognizable object into the human soul: "Sensation is that which is capable of taking the forms of sensually perceived objects without matter, just as wax perceives the impression of a seal without iron and without gold" [[10], p. 73]. It is important to see that in this example, the information is not only the shape of the seal impression on the wax, but also the shape of the seal itself. The form of the seal is primary, the form of the seal impression is secondary. We will agree to call the first information-for, the second - information-from. Information-from is not just secondary to information-for. She matches it. The transmission of information takes place only when this correspondence takes place. This is true for all types of information, including subjective ones.

A fundamentally important detail: in the example of Aristotle, strictly speaking, not only the shape of the seal is transferred to wax, but also part of its matter (gold), as well as part of the movement (heat) contained in it. According to Aristotle, the gold of the seal is the material cause, the movement contained in it is the driving one, and the form is the formal one. It turns out that the transmission of objective information is one of three types of causation. To understand the nature of both information and its translation, these three forms of causation must be compared.

The main similarity between the material, motive and formal cause is that they generate their effects in full accordance with the principle of conservation and the principle of monism. The principle of conservation consists of two parts: 1) nothing arises from nothing and does not turn into nothing; 2) what arrived in one place, departed in another, and vice versa. Both parts of this principle work in a material and driving causal relationship: the heat of a stone heated by the Sun "arrived" in the stone only because it "departed" from the Sun. A cause generates an effect by what becomes an effect. It is this thought that is expressed in the Latin formula "aequat causa effectum", "identity of cause to effect".

But in a formal causal relationship, only the first part of the conservation principle works: the impression of the seal form on wax did not arise from nothing, but only because the form of the seal itself already existed before its appearance. However, after its appearance, the shape of the seal did not "decrease". This pattern works in broadcasting not only objective, but also subjective information. If I give you an apple, says B. Russell, then I will have one less apple, but if I give you an idea, the number of ideas I have will not decrease. To understand the transmission of information, taking into account this feature is of fundamental importance.

The principle of monism has the same importance for understanding the three types of causation. In the time of Democritus and Aristotle, he expressed himself with the formula "like experiences from like." By similarity, we meant the similarity of those objects between which matter, energy and information are exchanged. For example, a tree "suffers" from iron because it is similar to iron, i.e. it also has mass, energy and spatial characteristics.

In the transmission of objective information, the principle of monism is manifested in the fact that both the information carrier-for, and the information carrier-from have mass, energy and spatial characteristics. When there is no such similarity between objects, interaction between them is impossible, and therefore the exchange of information is impossible. At this point, the heuristic possibilities of the hylomorphic, continuum, Aristotelian vision of the world for understanding the nature of information are perhaps exhausted. Let us now test the heuristic possibilities of the atomistic, diskette, and Democritus worldview.

Discrete interpretation of objective information. The discrete understanding of objective information is expressed by two significantly different pairs of philosophical categories. In the first case, "form" is replaced by "structure" and "matter" by "elements"; in the second, "form" is replaced by "relation" and "matter" by "relation carriers". The connection of a structure with relationships is quite obvious: it is a set of relationships that form a system of its elements. It is more difficult to see the connection of structure and relationships with form. It was brilliantly analyzed by the outstanding Bulgarian philosopher D. Mikhalchev in the magnificent book "Form and Attitude" ^[11]. I rely on the results he obtained.

Within the framework of a discrete vision of the world, the transmission of information, for example, the impression of a seal on wax, can be represented either as a transfer of structure from one system to another system, or as a transfer of relations between components of one object to another object. The categories of "relation" and "relation carriers" are more subtle, though more cumbersome research tools than "structure" and "elements". That is why I will use them mainly. If we express N. Wiener's formula on them, we get: information is a relationship that forms an object from its components and is capable of being transferred to other objects. The above formula of L. Brillouin "Negentropy is equivalent to information" can also be translated into the same language. To do this, it is enough to take into account that negentropy is traditionally understood as the orderliness, organization of the system. The relationships between its elements and their increasingly complex ensembles make the system orderly. Therefore, the information contained in the system is the relationship between its elements that can be transferred to other systems.

The transmission of information from existing objects to emerging ones. So far, I have considered broadcasting objective information on the material of simultaneously existing objects, for example, printing and wax. Now it is necessary to consider the transmission of information from its actual material carrier to the emerging one, from ancestor to descendant. Let's take an extremely elementary example of such a translation: the transfer of information contained in disparate molecules of sodium chloride (table salt) dissolved in water to the resulting sodium chloride crystal. The process of formation of such a crystal consists of two stages: first, a germinal crystal arises, and then the main one grows on its basis. The transmission of information at the first stage consists in the fact that the internal structure of actually existing sodium chloride molecules determines the structure of the emerging crystal. This method of broadcasting information is called synthetic. At the second stage, the structure of the resulting germ crystal determines the structure of the neighboring parts. This method of broadcasting information is called matrix.

The matrix method of information transmission is based on the principle of monism, expressed by the formula like attracts like: from a mixture of substances in which an already formed germ crystal is immersed, it attracts only such molecules as it consists of, and then puts them in such a relationship in which its constituent molecules are located. As a result, the structure of the emerging part of the crystal duplicates the structure of the existing one. This kind of matrix translation of information is called replication.

There is a problem here. Replication is the self-reproduction of an object, and it is considered a specific feature of a living thing. This example shows that there is no sharp boundary between the inanimate and the living, and therefore germinal forms of self-reproduction are already found in inanimate nature, in particular, during the formation of crystals.

Genetic information. During the evolution of inanimate nature, genetic information appears based on the objective information existing in it, embodied in the so-called living molecules - DNA, RNA and protein. Genetic information is similar to information contained in inanimate objects in that it represents the relationship between the atoms included in these molecules - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Today it is described with precision to the relationships between individual atoms. I will consider it from a purely epistemological point of view, without delving into the professional subtleties of genetics. I'll start with the DNA molecule.

Like crystal, historically it is formed in two stages. On the first, synthetic, in the so-called primary broth, a germinal (primary, maternal) DNA molecule arises. At the second, matrix stage, daughter DNA appears on its basis as on a matrix. This is a classic case of replication, also described with precision to atoms and the relationships between them.

There is no clarity in understanding the nature of the primary, synthetic stage of the translation of genetic information. Two points of view are at odds here. According to the first one, everything happens here in exactly the same way as during the formation of a germ crystal: the scattered atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen in the primary broth have combined into a DNA molecule. The physical information contained in these atoms, which represents the relationships between the elementary particles forming them, determines the genetic information, which represents the relationships that unite these atoms into a DNA molecule.

But an equally natural objection is raised against this completely natural point of view. The ability to combine carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms into a DNA molecule without any outside interference is inherent in these atoms. But when mathematicians calculated the extent of this possibility, it turned out that it was negligible. But DNA molecules exist, that's a fact. And if there are not enough opportunities in the atoms they consist of to combine them into this molecule, then we need to look for another reason for their occurrence "on the side". Simple reflections lead to the conclusion that it can only be the creator of all nature. In this regard, I recall P. Laplace's answer to Napoleon's question why his cosmological theory does not mention the Creator: "I didn't need this hypothesis." This answer can be generalized: any theory is scientific as long as it does not need this hypothesis.

This brings our hopes back to the "naive" hypothesis, according to which the first DNA molecules and the genetic information embedded in them arose as a result of the realization of the possibilities inherent in those atoms of which these molecules are composed. To substantiate this hypothesis, the main thing is the fact that the probability of the occurrence of DNA molecules and the genetic information encoded in it inside inanimate nature and according to its laws is not zero. Therefore, the question is: is the time of the Earth's existence and the amount existing on it enough for this non-zero possibility to turn into reality?

But let's leave this question aside, let's assume that the primary DNA molecule and the genetic information contained in it somehow arose. The emergence of all other "living" molecules, together with the genetic information contained in them, is accomplished by the matrix method. The appearance of daughter DNA molecules occurs as a result of replication. On their basis, RNA molecules arise containing a new type of genetic information, i.e. a new type of relationship between the atoms forming them. This second type of matrix translation of information is called transcription. At the third stage, information from the DNA molecule is translated into a protein molecule. This type of matrix translation of information is also called translation by genetics.

Biological information. Based on these three types of genetic information, biological information arises. It is still a relationship, but no longer between atoms in a macromolecule, but between macromolecules and the parts of organisms formed from them. This complication of the material media leads to the complication of the information itself and the appearance of new properties in it. One of them is as follows. Genetically, the first organisms are devoid of subjective reality and therefore have no goals that are not capable of appropriate behavior. But their genome endows their behavior with a property called quasi-expediency: these organisms accept information from the outside and broadcast their own information outside so that objectively, in fact, these translations contribute to their homeostasis, as well as to the prolongation of their life and the life of their kind, i.e., ontogenesis and phylogenesis. Such behavior is impossible in inanimate nature.

The next qualitative leap in the evolution of information forms and ways of its translation is associated with the emergence of the nervous system. In this case, not only the information contained in object A is transferred to object B, but also the information contained in the object affecting A. For example, a spider reacts not only to the shaking of the web, but also to the victim trapped in it.

The immateriality of objective information. So, I have considered three types of objective information: 1) existing in inanimate nature, 2) genetic and 3) biological. It was shown that, depending on the style of thinking, each of them can be represented as the form of an object, as its structure and as the relationship between its components. All these three types of objective information have a feature that Plato and Aristotle thought about, and which is most easily seen in the material of relationships: they do not consist of matter and therefore do not have physical attributes: mass, energy and spatial characteristics. Therefore, they cannot have a physical effect on physical objects. Such an effect is exerted only by objects united by relations into objects of a higher type, for example, atoms united into a molecule.

Subjective reality and subjective information. What has been said about the three types of objective information is enough to turn to the study of subjective information. And for this, in turn, it is necessary to fully realize the three "oddities" of the subjective reality that it is part of.

The first of these oddities is that in everyday life we do not divide the world into subjective and objective, we do not "double" it: I see a table, not an image of a table, the table and its visual image are merged for me, act as one object. We do not notice this oddity of sensory perception simply because we are used to it, as we get used to a stable smell. The practical activity of not only humans, but also higher animals is based on this "lie for salvation". It is thanks to her that the cat clings to the mouse, and not to her eyes. Sometimes, however, the belief that an object and its sensory image are one and the same thing fails us, for example, in hallucinations.

Attempts to theoretically explain this "strangeness" of our subjective reality and the subjective information contained in it have given rise to two philosophical systems: presentationism, which elevates this everyday naive realism to the rank of a philosophical worldview, and solipsism, according to which only sensory images of things really exist, which we naively take for objectively existing things merged with these sensory images.

Realism opposes presentationism and solipsism as two explanations for the psychological coincidence of the sensual image of an object with the object itself. He "bifurcates" the objective-subjective world of an individual into an objective and subjective one and thereby discovers the second strangeness of subjective reality. The fact is that it is given to a person directly, he simply cannot doubt its existence, but the existence beyond its boundaries is objective (transfenomenal, transcendental, external, physical, etc.) He has to prove the reality to himself. Descartes tried to do this with the famous "cogito ergo sum". Kant recognized this attempt as unsuccessful and called "a scandal for philosophy" the need to "accept only on faith the existence of things outside of us" [[12], p.101].

A realist encounters the third "strangeness" of subjective reality when trying to discover it not in his own head, but in the head of another person. With the help of the most modern devices, he can detect in his head only the components of his brain, the electrochemical processes taking place in it and the relationships between these components and processes, i.e. objective information. A researcher who receives such a result is tempted to say that there is nothing else there. The only thing that keeps him from this conclusion is the presence of his own subjective reality. This is a "scandal for philosophy", not inferior in scale to the one Kant wrote about. If both "scandals" are combined, it turns out that from inside the subjective reality one cannot be convinced of the existence of an objective one, and from inside the objective one - of the existence of a subjective one.

But consider the point of view of a realist who has solved all these difficulties for himself. He is convinced of the existence of an objective reality beyond the boundaries of his own consciousness, and of the existence of the consciousnesses of other people. Let's look at the problems that arise in this case.

The problem of consciousness and the brain. The world, which is beyond the boundaries of the subjective reality of this particular individual, splits into two unequal parts: the one that is located within the spatial boundaries of his brain, and the one that is beyond these boundaries. The question of the relationship of an individual's subjective reality with the objective reality that lies within the spatial boundaries of his brain is one of the sides of the main question of philosophy, the question of the relationship between objective and subjective reality. It has been studied throughout the history of cognition. That is why today it is formulated in almost half a dozen ways: 1) as a problem of consciousness and brain, 2) as a problem of the psyche and brain, 3) as a psychophysiological problem, 4) as a mind-brain problem (it is important to distinguish it from the mind-body problem, which refers to the whole body, not just the brain), 5) as a difficult problem of consciousness (hard problem of consciousness). It is in this latter formulation that this problem is explored in the modern philosophy of consciousness. It is emphasized that it is difficult only if we proceed from the primacy of the brain and ask how it generates consciousness^[59].

Here is how the essence of this problem is expressed by one of its leading domestic researchers D.I. Dubrovsky: "How to explain the connection of the phenomena of SR (subjective reality, – G.L.) with brain processes, if the first cannot be attributed physical properties (mass, energy, spatial characteristics), and the second must possess them?" [[13], p. 15]. In essence, this is a question of how to explain the connection between the brain and subjective reality based on one of the key principles of scientific research - the principle of monism. Classics of the philosophy of consciousness that they cannot answer this question, and call this situation a gap in explanation, an explanatory gap.

But for information theory, there is no need to investigate the relationship of the entire content of an individual's subjective reality to the entire content of objective reality contained in his brain. It is enough to consider the relationship of the subjective information contained in the subjective reality of an individual to the objective information contained in his brain and representing a system of relations between different areas of the brain and between the electrochemical processes occurring in it. After such a radical narrowing of the problem, the gap in explanation is removed. After all, these relationships are objective, but not material. They do not consist of matter and, conversely, have neither mass, nor energy, nor spatial characteristics. This allows us to reformulate D.I. Dubrovsky's question in this way: how to explain the connection of subjective information that does not have physical signs, enclosed in the subjective world of an individual, with objective information that also does not have physical signs, enclosed in his brain?

It is important to distinguish between two issues here: 1. How does the brain generate objective information, i.e. a system of relations between its parts and the electrochemical processes occurring in it? 2. How objective information, so understood, generates subjective information, and how the latter has the opposite effect on the former. The first question is solved by classical scientific methods. The second question is "difficult" only because it is based on a presupposition that seems so obvious that it is not even formulated explicitly: subjective information and objective information coexist side by side and interact with each other.

There are logically three possible answers to the natural question of how such an interaction is possible: 1. Modern science does not have the means to answer this question, but over time they will appear. 2. This issue cannot be solved by means of classical science; non-classical methods are needed. 3. The question does not make sense, because it is based on a false presupposition: there are no two interacting information in the human head; there are only the brain, studied to the smallest detail, as well as the electrochemical processes occurring in it, the relationships (including connections) between these parts and these processes.

But those philosophers who, in Plato's words, recognize that only what they can firmly grasp with their hands exists, simply do not notice this third component of the internal content of the brain. If you look at it, then the following "completely insane" hypothesis arises: Objective information, which is a system of relations between brain regions and electrochemical processes occurring in it, and subjective information located in the phenomenal world of the subject are not two different information that exist side by side and interact with each other, but the same information viewed from opposite positions: from the inside, from the perspective of the first person, and from the outside, from the perspective of an external observer. Here are some arguments in support of this hypothesis:

1. It removes the problem of the explanatory gap.

2. It simply explains the "mysterious" fact that not only subjective, but also objective information does not have physical characteristics.

3. It supports one of the key theses of the philosophical theory of information, according to which any information, including subjective information, can be represented in a certain aspect as a system of relations between the components of its material carrier, and the transmission of information as the transfer of these relations from one material carrier to another.

4. Situations where one subject was mistaken for two different subjects are quite typical in the history of cognition. Textbook example: the planet Venus has long been mistaken for two celestial bodies - the Morning and Evening star.

One can object to the last argument: the statement that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same celestial body does not contain an internal contradiction, and the statement that the structure of the electrochemical processes of the individual's brain and his subjective world are the same entity viewed from different sides is perceived as a contradiction.

The principle of complementarity and the problem of consciousness and the brain. However, contradictory statements about the same subject are also not uncommon in the history of science. A famous example is the experimentally established fact that in some experiments light behaves like a stream of waves, and in others - like a stream of corpuscles. Physicists perceived these indisputable experimental results as contradictory to each other. The way out in 1927 was proposed by N. Bohr. He stated that these experimental results do not exclude, but complement each other. This is how the famous principle of complementarity by N. Bohr arose. It exists in two interpretations. The first one is based on Hegel's thesis, which N. Bohr learned through S. Kierkegaard and which says: reality is contradictory, and therefore logically contradictory statements can be true. The second interpretation of the complementarity principle leaves the law of contradiction alone, but suggests postponing its application to conflicting experimental data. They need to be accepted, and the answer to the question of how they are possible should be left to future generations. It is possible that in order to do this in this particular science, the entire system of concepts will have to be changed.

Today, the principle of complementarity in both its interpretations has acquired a general methodological status. M.A. Rozov, for example, applies it in the study of social processes [[14] pp. 153 - 181]. I accept his second option: I propose to find out that the relationship recorded by devices between the electrochemical processes occurring in the individual's brain, on the one hand, and the subjective information directly given to him, on the other hand, is the same reality, and the answer to the question, how is this possible, should be postponed until that time, when science discovers the means necessary for this. The hope that this will happen is strengthened in me by the fact that the brain is the most complex subject of scientific research known today [[15], c18] and it certainly contains something "that our sages never dreamed of."

But we should not exaggerate the difference between this hypothesis and the traditional point of view. In solving some scientific problems, they work in the same way, for example, when comparing the processes occurring in the subject's mind with the processes occurring in his brain. This is done by comparing the reports of the brain researcher with the reports of the subject. These comparisons can be made both on the basis of the belief that two different and interacting processes are being compared, and on the basis of the belief that this is the same process viewed from two different sides. In the first case, the researcher is faced with a gap in the explanation, and in the second - with the very contradiction that the principle of complementarity allows to "put in parentheses".

The second option is closer to me. On its basis, the process of cognition of the objective world can be represented as follows. Objective information contained in a cognizable object and representing a system of relations between its components is transformed as a result of the influence of this object on the sensory organs of the subject into a system of relations between the components of these sensory organs, then a system of relations between the components of electrochemical processes occurring in the nervous system of the subject and, finally, into the structure of processes occurring in higher departments his brain. This is where something happens that, from the point of view of common sense, can never happen: before the subject himself, these relations appear as his subjective reality.

Based on the position of the identity of objective information contained in the subject's brain with subjective information contained in his phenomenal world, it is possible to describe a process that is paired with cognition - practice: the relationship between the processes occurring in the individual's brain is first transformed into the relationship between the processes in his nervous system, then into the relationship between the components of his expedient actions and, finally, in the relationship between the components of the objects or processes created by him. This confirms one of the key theses defended in the article: any information contained in a subject can be represented either as its form, or as its structure, or as the relationship between its components, and any transformation of information - as their transfer from one material medium to another.

The relationship of subjective information with objective information embodied in language. Many researchers do not like distinctions because they multiply problems. Among the problems generated by the distinction between objective and subjective information, one of the most difficult is the question of the relationship of information existing in the subjective world of an individual with that objective information, which is the relationship between letters, words and sentences of natural language. In the study of this issue, it is very heuristic to use the philosophical categories "essence" and "phenomenon": subjective information located in the phenomenal world of an individual and directly accessible only to him can be represented as an entity, and the relationship between letters, words and sentences of natural language in which this information is encoded, and which is available to all knowledgeable this language is like a manifestation of the essence. Encoding of subjective information in a text can be represented as a transition from the essence to the forms of its manifestation, and reading the text, i.e. decoding it, is the reverse process. This approach eliminates the interpretation of the structure of linguistic expressions not as objective information, but as objectively existing knowledge, which even K. Popper sinned in his theory of objective knowledge [[17], pp. 96-110].

The distinction between subjective and objective linguistic information makes it possible to distinguish between two information processes: the self-development of subjective information within the phenomenal world and the development of objective information in which subjective information is encoded according to the rules of grammar, logic and mathematics. There is a correspondence between these two information processes, which in the process of historical development, on the one hand, of subjective information, and, on the other, of natural language, becomes more and more strict. At some stage of increasing the rigor of this correspondence, it becomes possible to abstract from it and consider the transformation of language expressions according to the rules of grammar, logic and mathematics as an independent process in the manner of a chess game. The restoration of the connection of linguistic expressions with the subjective information for which they were created is carried out only after the completion of these transformations. Initially, this was how mathematical information was processed. Then they began to process meaningful texts in the same way.

A qualitatively new stage in the evolution of information as a universal certainty of being came when the processing of objective information according to the rules of grammar, logic and mathematics was transferred to inanimate objects. This was first done with mathematical texts. Abacus appeared, then mechanical calculators, electronic calculators, and finally computers. Then the same path was followed by meaningful language information that functions according to the rules of logic. There was a denial of denial: objective information began to arise, transform and broadcast again on the basis of inanimate objects without the participation of people. But it happened at the highest stage of the evolution of information as a universal certainty of being. Today, the emergence, transformation and translation of computer information is the subject of a whole theory. As part of the study of the stages of the evolution of information as a universal certainty of being, I will, without delving into technical details, very briefly carry out its epistemological analysis.

Computer information. Computer information is called "fixed on a machine medium or transmitted via telecommunication channels in a form accessible to the perception of a computer" ^[16]. There is no subjective reality or subjective information in a computer. It contains only objective information, which is a system of relations between its material carriers. For the sake of specificity, I will talk about computer information recorded on ferromagnetic disks. Its cells, capable of magnetization and demagnetization, act as material carriers here, and the relationships between these cells and their increasingly complex systems act as objective information.

In the inanimate nature that existed before the emergence of life, the relationship between objects was entirely determined by the internal content of these objects. The relationships that make up the content of computer information are "inserted" between their media (in our example, between the cells of a magnetic disk) from the outside, by the will of the programmer. According to the rules, also created by the programmer, these relationships arise, transform and broadcast.

Therefore, computer information is not primary. It is only a form of manifestation of the essence, for example, objective information contained in natural language, which itself, in turn, is a form of manifestation of a deeper essence - subjective information existing in the phenomenal world of the subject. To turn this latter into computer information, three radical procedures must be performed with it. Firstly, to express it in objective information contained in natural language; secondly, to abstract from the connection of this objective information with the subjective form of expression of which it is; thirdly, to translate this objective information from a natural language containing several dozen letters into a computer language containing only two letters in our example, the magnetized and non-magnetized cells of a computer disk. An unmagnetized cell is usually denoted by the number 0, and a magnetized one by the number 1. Hence, the information contained on a magnetic disk and representing the relationship between its cells is also called digital. This is somewhat confusing.

These sequences of magnetized and non-magnetized cells and the ones and zeros displaying them can be of any finite length, which allows them to contain any finite amount of information. But a question arises that is of fundamental importance for the entire philosophical theory of information: what is the minimum amount of computer information, bits, and what is its minimum material carrier?

I will consider this question using an example popular in computer literature - a computer-controlled traffic light. To begin with, I will simplify this example as much as possible. Let's say we have a railway crossing in front of us, regulated only by a red light, which is controlled by a computer connected to a video camera. The computer turns on the traffic light when the video camera captures the train crossing the crossing and turns it off when there is no train. To do this, it is enough to activate only one cell on the computer's magnetic disk: the train is moving - the cell is magnetized (1) - the traffic light turns on; the train has passed - the cell is demagnetized (0) - the traffic light turns off. These two opposite states of one cell are, on the one hand, information from (from a video camera), and, on the other, information for (for a traffic light).

Now let's complicate the example: let the crossing be regulated by a three-color traffic light. To control it, two cells must already be activated in the computer. The relationship between them can no longer be two, but four objective information: there is no train - both cells are not magnetized (00). - the traffic light is green; the train is approaching the first cell is magnetized, the second is not - (10) - the traffic light is yellow; the train passes through the crossing - both cells are magnetized (11) - the traffic light is red; the train is moving away - the first cell is magnetized, the second is not (10) the traffic light is yellow again.

A question arises that is fundamental to the whole theory of information: so what is an elementary, atomic amount of any objective information: one of the two opposite properties of a material object (magnetization - non-magnetization) or a binary relationship between two material objects? Above, I simplified the matter - I interpreted objective information as a system of relations between the components of a material object, capable of being transferred to another object. A counterexample of this interpretation is the case of a red traffic light, where the role of objective information was not the relationship between objects, but the property of one object. This counterexample forces us to make a significant addition to this classical theory of information. As follows from the second example, the magnetization and non-magnetization of cells are closely related to the relationship between them: they are its bases. This allows us to assert that not only relationships, but also their foundations can act as objective information, and not only pairs, triples, etc. of objects between which these relations exist, but also individual objects - carriers of the foundations of these relations - can act as material carriers of information.

To summarize. The discussion of the nature of information cannot be completed. It can only be stopped. I stop him here and briefly summarize what has been said.

The information is interpreted in the article as a universal certainty of being, existing both in inanimate objects and in the phenomenal world of man. This is how information understood in the history of human cognition was recorded in three categories: "form", "structure" and "relation". The key to understanding the nature of information is to divide all its varieties into objective and subjective ones. It is relatively easy to interpret all kinds of objective information as a form, structure, or relationship. The problem arises when summarizing subjective information under these categories. To solve this problem, the article presents arguments in defense of the hypothesis that the subjective information existing in the phenomenal world of an individual is identical to the objective information that exists simultaneously with it in the higher parts of his brain. This hypothesis has the following heuristic advantages:

1. Represents all types of information as species of the same genus, which allows us to explore the relationship between them based on the principle of monism.

2. Reveals the genetic connection between all types of information, shows exactly how, in strict accordance with the laws of the material world, information existing in inanimate objects is transformed into biological, including genetic, information existing in the phenomenal world of people and, finally, into computer information.

3. Creates a methodological basis for the study of the relationship between the processes occurring in the subjective world of an individual and the physiological processes occurring in his brain.

4. Represents three types of human activity: 1) the study of nature, 2) the transfer of research results to other persons and 3) their application in practice - as three ways of transferring information from one material medium to another.