Computer science and information vision of the world from the standpoint of the principle of materialistic monism

1.      Introduction

The concepts of computer science and information vision of the world entered science in the second half of the twentieth century. And with them, an implicit problem appeared in science, which can be briefly called the problem of information and which finds its expression in the failure of many years of attempts by the scientific community to come to a common understanding of what exactly information can be as something encoded into material structures and moved along with them. Despite the fact that many books and articles have been devoted to the philosophical understanding of the central concept of the information vision of the world, there has been no consensus on what the essence of the phenomenon underlying such a vision of the world is. And this is despite the fact that we live, as is commonly believed, in the information age. As a result, the problem of information is becoming more and more urgent every day and requires a speedy solution. Here is an eloquent quote: "... The future of the information society is seen by some futurists as a world filled with intelligent devices for various purposes, which will firmly enter our lives and become attributes of a new, information culture of mankind... However, this also raises a fundamentally new global problem. It is connected with the fact that we still know very little about the essence of the "substance" that circulates in all these "smart" devices and systems and is a kind of "working body" for them. The analysis shows that the current level of development of information science lags significantly behind the level of development of information technology and technologies. And this gap represents a strategic threat to the future of civilization" ^{[1, pp. 52-53]}.

This philosophical research is aimed at identifying the essence of the "substance" that supposedly circulates in all "smart" devices. And since, as suggested by more than half a century of collective experience of such research, this task is not easy, we will begin this study by clarifying those worldview positions, starting from which we will move towards solving the task.

2.      About the worldview concepts underlying this study.

The methodology of this philosophical research is based on the consistent implementation of the principle of materialistic monism. But not the one in which it is recklessly required to admit that "there is nothing in the world but moving matter..." ^{[2, p. 171]}, but a somewhat refined one – the one that requires recognizing that there is nothing but moving matter at the heart of the world, and thus allows you to openly admit the existence of all that which is derived from its existence and movement, including everything living, spiritual and ideal. And in order to achieve maximum consistency in the implementation of this principle of materialism, we will have to clarify some more of the existing ideas about the foundations of this doctrine. And first of all, it is about understanding what matter is.

Lenin's well-known definition of matter, which made a significant contribution to the development of philosophical ideas about matter, says: "matter is that which, acting on our senses, produces sensation" [ibid., p. 141].

But, first of all, why is the property of materiality tied to the effect only on the senses? Isn't it also material that, acting on our environment, for some reason does not act on our senses (such as electric or magnetic fields)? The answer here is quite obvious. A distinctive feature of materiality is impact, influence, mutual. Therefore, in our research we will proceed from the fact that everything is material that manifests its existence through interaction with its environment; through interaction and thereby interchangeability.

And secondly, can matter itself act directly on the senses? After all, the concept of matter hides the result of abstraction, and therefore, just as it is impossible to feel an abstract person, it is also impossible to feel abstract matter. The stone lying on the road and acting on our senses is material, but it is not matter. Matter – that is, what affects - he just appears, acts, turns out to be. Moreover, he is it only in human perception, which "ignores" the specific form of his influence, his specific properties. In other words, with the help of the concept of matter and the word "is", only the status of everything that manifests itself, its properties in interaction is expressed. As revealed by the author in ^[3] and ^[4], there is a whole class of concepts specifically designed to indicate what or who something or someone is. The general feature of the objective content of status concepts is precisely that it does not go beyond the human consciousness, i.e., these concepts hide ideal phenomena that have received a verbal form of expression (which in this case completely "fits together", combined with the abstraction of the content of the concept of matter).

Consequently, Lenin's definition of matter requires clarification and consideration of the difference between "is" and "is". Matter is not some special substance that supposedly makes up everything that is sensually accessible (as you often hear), but an abstract carrier of the characteristic "that which affects". Therefore, the usual expression "moving matter" should not be understood in the literal sense, since it is not matter that moves, but something material. And on the other hand, it must be borne in mind that materiality as a property of influencing one's environment is the most common property of all elements of the human-cognizable world, since any of their properties is manifested only in interaction.

But I would like to achieve greater clarity on the question of Lenin's theory of reflection, in which reflection is presented as a kind of fundamental property of matter: "...It is logical to assume that all matter has a property essentially related to sensation, the property of reflection" ^{[2, p. 90]}. What is this property that underlies the materialistic theory of knowledge and which the creators of various concepts of information are trying to rely on in one way or another?

To answer this question, let's pay attention to the fact that people talk about reflecting something in something when they find that the result of any influence corresponds to certain properties of the influencing factor. And this means that the words about the "property of reflection" just hide the indicated pattern of mutual change under mutual influences. In this correspondence, the essence of the reflection property finds expression. But it is also important that such a correspondence arises in any material interaction. All interchanges in the material world occur in full accordance with the influence exerted, i.e. by mutual consideration of the properties of all participants in the interaction. This is the fundamental pattern of the world of universal interaction, in which a peculiar "sensitivity", "responsiveness" of all material things in relation to each other is manifested, which just allows us to talk about the presence of a property related to sensation in it. This means that a refined understanding of what matter is and what the essence of the "reflection property" is turns Lenin's assumption that there is a property related to sensation in the world into a strict and natural conclusion from the recognition of its materiality. As it turned out, the property of reflection is derived from the property of materiality. And as a result, we come to the conclusion that the world known by man owes its cognizability to its materiality, which finds expression in universal interaction and interchange in accordance with the influence exerted and represents the most general property of all that it consists of.

Finally, let us clarify for ourselves the question of materialistic monism. It is generally believed that dialectical materialism is a consistent conductor of this principle. However, let's look at the continuation of the above quote. And it says: "... and moving matter cannot move except in space and time" ^{[2, p. 171]}. But if it is assumed that along with moving matter, phenomena such as space and time also lie in the foundation of the Universe (as a necessary condition for the movement of matter), then on what basis should the existence of any other "fundamental entities" that do not possess any materiality be denied? There is an inconsistency in the implementation of the principle of materialistic monism, embedded in the very foundation of the materialistic doctrine (as described in more detail in ^[3]. The derivation of space and time from the existence and motion of matter is also shown there).

But let's note another interesting point in this regard. The point is that, since the materialism of the worldview is determined based on one or another answer to the main question of philosophy, it is possible to be a materialist and at the same time not follow the principle of materialistic monism. And it is fully used by all those who can be called "cautious" or "nominal" materialists.  What pushes them to such caution, on the one hand, is precisely the prevailing misconception that the principle of materialistic monism really requires recognizing that there is nothing in the world but moving ("in space and in time") matter. An idea that has penetrated into philosophical dictionaries, on the pages of which one can find statements that materialistic monism proceeds from the fact that "... all phenomena in the world are different types of moving matter" ^{[6, p. 406]} (from which follows the ridiculous conclusion that ideal phenomena should be considered as just a kind of movement matter). On the other hand, the apparent incompatibility of the ideal with the material basis of the Universe also pushes for such caution. All this, apparently, deters the bulk of materialists from following the path of recognizing the principle of materialistic monism, i.e. it prevents the transition from "nominal" materialism (associated with the recognition of the primacy of matter in relation to consciousness) to full-fledged (associated with the recognition of the primacy of matter in relation to absolutely all phenomena of the world known by man). And as a result, it is the "cautious", "initial" form of materialism that prevails everywhere among materialists.

But in fact, matter is primary in relation not only to consciousness. It is quite obvious that there is no other way to declare your presence except by interacting with your environment, i.e. by manifesting the property of materiality. From which it follows that matter is primary in relation to everything in general that is able to declare its existence. In other words, the world known by man can be based only on what is material; its cognizability is inseparable from its materiality, impossible without it (as noted above). This means that absolutely all the processes and phenomena of the human-cognizable world are materially conditioned. There can be no other basis for all phenomena in the world that exists independently of man. I.e., the "cautious" form of materialism does not take into account the most important regularity of the existence of the world known by man.

 It follows inexorably from the principle of materialistic monism that the compatibility of the content of concepts and judgments with its material conditionality is a necessary condition for the objectivity of their content. And we will also adopt this conclusion as a general guideline in the search for a solution to the problem of information.

3.      About the natural mechanism of management and cognition. Or about the origin of the ideal in the material world.

Starting directly to identify the natural mechanisms of management and cognition, we are forced, first of all, to point out the lack of an unambiguous understanding of what knowledge is. «...If there are at least three serious concepts of truth, there is an extensive literature devoted to the consideration of various problems arising in connection with the interpretation of the concept of truth, then the concept of knowledge is most often used in a vague, close to the ordinary sense" ^{[5, p. 61]}. At the same time, in some philosophical dictionaries, knowledge is presented as just a social phenomenon ^{[6, p. 225]}, while in others it is assumed that "elementary knowledge is peculiar to animals" ^{[7, p. 192]}. As for the theory of knowledge, if judged by philosophical dictionaries, today it is "... a section of philosophy that studies the possibilities of human cognition of the world, the structure of his cognitive activity, types and forms of knowledge in its relation to reality, criteria for the truth and reliability of knowledge" ^{[6, p. 667]}. Therefore, it is not surprising that the absolute majority of scientists understand by knowledge only that which has a certain verbal form of expression, "... that which is expressed by a reasonable, generally valid, intersubjective sentence or a system of such sentences" ^{[5, p. 63]}.

But is cognitive activity unique to humans? Why did nature give all living beings a variety of sensory organs, if not in order for them to get some idea of their habitat, i.e., if not for cognition of the world in order to adapt to it? However, it is the anthropocentric understanding of the nature of knowledge that prevails, which by no means helps to identify the deep roots of this phenomenon. As a result, the question of the origin of knowledge as a kind of natural phenomenon was not actually raised by anyone. In view of the obvious relationship between management and cognition, we will have to not only raise this question, but also give an answer to it.

What few people doubt is the ideality of knowledge. But, since knowledge is generally recognized as an ideal phenomenon, it is obvious that no material interactions are capable of generating such a phenomenon. I.e., the mere materiality of the world known by man is not enough for the appearance of any ideal phenomena in it.

On the other hand, the same thing allows us to talk about the presence of knowledge in someone's behavior as about the manifestation of the universal property of reflection - the correspondence of the behavior of material systems to external factors. The only difference is that in this case we are talking about such a correspondence, which is provided not so much by external influence as "from within", the internal structure of the material system, determining its behavior taking into account external factors and internal "interests". Therefore, we are talking about self-governing systems, about systems with self-governing bodies ("brains") and a set of abilities for one or another behavior dictated by their self-governing bodies. I.e., the main thing in this case is no longer the materiality of these systems, but the level of their organization and the way they function. If the self-determined behavior of such a system corresponds to a certain event, then in its behavior (more precisely, in the activity of its brain) there is knowledge about the occurrence of this event as something that allows this event to be taken into account. Where there is such a correspondence, there is knowledge.

And as a result, we come to the following conclusions. First, the emergence of knowledge is closely related to the behavior of self-governing material systems and the activities of their self-governing bodies. And secondly, knowledge is what allows the brain of a self–governing system to take into account factors external to this system in its management activities; it is a means of self-government.

But the revealed connection of knowledge with the behavior of self-governing systems and the activities of their self-governing bodies immediately raises the following questions: why does it appear there? Is his presence inevitable in this free, self-directed behavior of theirs? And most importantly, what is the mechanism of its appearance and what is the form of its presence in their behavior?

 In search of an answer to them, we will take into account the fact that self-governing material systems include not only all living beings, but in general all those systems in which there are elements of self-government, automation, regardless of the degree of complexity of these systems. Let's turn, for example, to the operation of such a simple and well-known self-governing system as an automatically opening door. The question is, how does she "know" about the approach of a person? Why does she always open on time, thereby demonstrating her full awareness of the events that interest her machine brain?

And it opens on time thanks to the "prompts" of pulses from the motion sensor, which is an integral part of this automated system. Reacting to these impulses by turning on the door opening mechanism, the brain of the door thereby ensures the timeliness of its opening. Moreover, such a reaction of the brain is caused by the impulses coming to it due to its internal device, which takes into account the inextricable connection of the appearance of impulses from the motion sensor with the appearance of a person in the door service area. I.e., the "smart" reaction of the brain to impulses is predetermined by its device and the abilities of the system controlled by it. And this is a very important point in understanding the general principle of the natural mechanism of control and cognition, and therefore the mechanism of the appearance of everything ideal in the material world.

The fact is that, reacting to the impulses from the motion sensor by turning on the door opening mechanism, the door brain thereby shows the ability to respond to the impulses coming to it as something that allows it to take into account the appearance of a certain event (i.e. to ensure that the behavior of the door corresponds to the appearance of this event). But in this attitude of the brain to impulses as something that allows it to take into account external factors, knowledge manifests itself as something that allows it to take into account these factors. In other words, due to this response to impulses, the brain gives them the role of "what allows you to take into account external factors", i.e. the role (function) of knowledge. At the same time, impulses are needed by the brain primarily as a means of control. He needs them not in order to bring knowledge about external factors into his activity, but to take into account these factors by responding to impulses "like that..." But, reacting to them in this way, the brain thereby brings knowledge into its activity as what these factors turn out to be in it impulses. And there is no other knowledge than that which, thanks to his reaction, these impulses turn out to be for him in his managerial activities.

And on the other hand, from the fact that the impulses entering the brain allow it to take into account external factors, it does not follow at all that these impulses are the knowledge that is present in its activity. Knowledge is not impulses, but what they turn out to be (act, are) in the activity of the brain, which reacts to them as something that allows it to take into account external factors. With the help of the concept of "knowledge", only the status of impulses is expressed, indicating their loading in the activity of the brain with the appropriate role. I.e., here, too, we encounter the concept of status and the ideal phenomenon hiding behind such a concept (which fully corresponds to the ideality of any knowledge). And just as a spoon is not something that a person holds in his hand while eating (since in the object that he holds, the distinctive characteristic of a spoon "what you eat" has no expression), so knowledge is not those impulses that the brain relies on in its management activities. They turn out to be knowledge only in his attitude to them, expressed by his reaction to them "as to ...". Only in the form of such an attitude to impulses coming from "outside" is knowledge about anything present in the activity of the brain. But the distinctive feature of ideal phenomena is precisely that their presence is manifested only in the behavior of self-governing material systems corresponding to their presence (as described in more detail in ^[3] and ^[4]).

Moreover, the "patent" for the invention of a self-government mechanism that "endows" the material world with ideal phenomena belongs precisely to nature (which, when creating self-governing systems, on the one hand, managed to find the possibility of using insignificant impulses from external influence as a means of self-government, a means of accounting for external factors for such systems, and on the other hand, to take advantage of the infinite variety of different circumstances arising from the materiality of the world). Man in the construction of "smart" devices follows only in her footsteps, whereas all living things owe their existence to her invention, in which knowledge is something derived from the ability of the brain of a self-governing system to respond nonphysically to impulses coming to it "from the outside". So, the hare runs away from the predator not because he discovered in his head the knowledge of the danger of such an encounter, but because it is precisely this reaction to the image of the predator (which arose in the hare's head in response to impulses from the senses) that is predetermined by the structure of the hare's brain. But in such a reaction, the presence of relevant knowledge is precisely manifested as a kind of ideal component of his materially conditioned managerial activity.

Thus, the natural mechanism of cognition is an integral part of the natural control mechanism. At the heart of the natural mechanism of control and cognition lies the materially conditioned ability of the governing bodies of self-governing systems to respond to impulses coming to them from receptors as something that allows them to take into account certain external factors. At the same time, it is quite obvious that it is impossible to carry out management activities without having the specified ability to non-physical response. This means that the brain's ability to respond in this way is an attribute, an innate ability of the brain of any self-governing system. As for the brain of living beings who have reached a sufficiently high level in their development, it is able to react with the introduction of certain knowledge about the outside world not only to impulses from receptors, but also to other factors available to it (such as sensations, images and representations), which will be discussed in the next part of the article. 

But it also follows from what has been said that ideal phenomena in the form of a particular knowledge are an integral part of the managerial activity of the brain of any self-governing material system.Any act of manifestation by the brain of the ability to react to the impulses coming to it "like that ..." is also an act of manifestation of the corresponding ideal phenomenon. At the same time, the managerial activity of the brain is filled with some kind of knowledge, not because it "draws" it from somewhere with the help of impulses coming to it, but because in response to their arrival it shows such an ability, the manifestation of which is a form of the presence of a certain knowledge in its activity.

But this means that the idea that has developed at the moment in the materialistic theory of knowledge, that the source of our knowledge are sensations, the source of which, in turn, is objective reality ^{[2, p. 122]}, gives a somewhat distorted picture of the nature of our knowledge, not taking into account the fact that sensations do not arise at all without the help of the brain. Looking ahead a little, we note that the sensations of the brain of living beings only denote that knowledge, which is played in its activity by the impulses coming to it. Living beings experience certain sensations only because their brain generates these sensations for itself in response to impulses coming from receptors. It generates various sensations in accordance with the belonging of impulses to a particular receptor and in order to create a relatively complete image of the external factors that generated these impulses.

The results of this study indicate that knowledge owes its presence in the brain's activity not to sensations (which the machine brain does not have, but which, however, does not prevent it from controlling taking into account external factors), but to its manifestation of its attributive ability to respond nonphysically to factors available to it. At the same time, showing this ability, the brain acts not as a source of knowledge, but as a materially conditioned form of their disembodied presence in its management activities. Such their presence, which is manifested only in the behavior of the material system controlled by them corresponding to their presence. This ensures the presence of the ideal in the material world. As for the outside world, it acts as a source for the brain only of those impulses that come to it from external receptors and are a necessary condition for it to carry out its managerial activities.

But it should also be noted that in ontological terms, i.e., in essence, the ability to react "as to ..." is the ability to reflect activity! In other words, reflective activity finds expression in the form of the manifestation of this ability. Consequently, in the material world there is not only a passive form of reflection, which is an integral part of any material interaction, but also an active form of reflection inherent in the management activities of self-governing systems as a necessary condition for the functioning of these systems. The presence of an active form of reflection in the material world was not taken into account by Lenin's theory of reflection and thus the materialistic theory of cognition.

Now, with the identification of this missing link in the materialistic theory of knowledge, it becomes obvious that to reduce the process of cognition to the "socio-historical process of creative activity of people" ^{[6, p. 511]} means to approach the consideration of this process extremely one-sidedly and superficially. The verbal form of expressing knowledge is just the tip of the iceberg that a person has encountered in developing a theory of knowledge. Where there are self-governing systems, there is necessarily a process of cognition. The process of cognition acquires independent value for the brain only when it reaches the conceptual level of control, or, in other words, the level of the brain of an intelligent being. At the same time, naturally, all ideal phenomena, in the form of which this or that knowledge appears, also arise not at all "in the depths of social practice" as some socio-historical phenomena in origin [ibid., p. 235], but in the depths of the managerial activities of the governing bodies of self-governing material systems as an integral part In other words, ideal phenomena are much more widespread than expected. However, the main thing for us is still the discovery of a natural control mechanism, which turned out to be a "part-time" mechanism of cognition. We will start from it in our further discussions.

4.      On the prevalence of the identified mechanism of control and cognition and its role in the existence of phenomena such as signals and signs.

The ability to respond nonphysically to available factors, which underlies the mechanism of cognition, invented by nature during the creation of self-governing systems, and is widespread, first of all, in nature itself as a common basis for the expedient behavior of all living beings. It is precisely this that viruses manifest, reacting to someone else's body as something suitable for their habitat. It is also manifested by plants, reacting to seasonal changes in the weather as something that requires a certain change in their development cycle. Moreover, it is on its basis that the development of all natural forms of self-government takes place.

For example, in the case of orientation in the outside world, the appearance of a whole set of different sensations in the brain of highly organized beings does not detract from the importance of its ability to respond to impulses coming from sensitive receptors (sense organs) as something that certain external factors are associated with. The fact is that by various sensations the brain expresses for itself nothing more than the belonging of the impulses coming to it from the sensory organs, which it takes into account in its reaction to these impulses. And since different sensory organs are tuned to perceive qualitatively different properties, he thereby designates for himself the qualitative specificity of the external factors that gave rise to these impulses. In other words, by designating impulses with sensations in accordance with their affiliation, the brain thereby designates the content of the knowledge that appears in its activity in the form of its ability to respond to these impulses, taking into account their origin.

At the same time, V. I. Lenin drew attention to the connection of sensations with the qualitative specifics of external factors, noting in the Philosophical Notebooks that "...the most initial is the feeling, and in it the quality is inevitable..." ^{[8, p. 301]}. However, the "initial" for the brain are still not sensations, but impulses from the sensory organs, the belonging of which it designates with various sensations and thereby receives sensually given images of the external world, in which all the knowledge that turns out to be in its activity in the course of its response to those coming to it from the sensory organs is represented. impulses, taking into account their inextricable connection with the factors that gave rise to them.

But after all, based on the ability of your brain to respond to the factors available to it as something that is connected with something else, all living beings communicate with each other, manifesting it in responding to various sounds, smells and body movements as what these creatures have designated "for others" some of their desires or threats. It is on it that the human way of communication is based - speech, writing, and therefore thinking and consciousness as communication with oneself. It is only by reacting to the sounds uttered by a person as to what something is indicated by (i.e., comprehending these sounds) that a person can use them as a means of communication and thinking. And only thanks to the ability to respond to written messages as to what is indicated by the sounds spoken by a person, it was possible to create and develop writing. At the same time, on the one hand, knowledge, which received a verbal form of expression, acted as the basis of consciousness, and on the other hand, the brain learned to acquire knowledge also through logical inferences (which found expression in predicting the possible course of events and revealing the essence of mysterious phenomena). And only then did the process of cognition reach the level of its social conditioning and stand out in the field of special scientific activity.

But without this ability of the brain, not only all living things cannot do, but in general everything is self-controlled, automated, including all communication systems. For example, the work of the telegraph is based on the use of electrical impulses as a means of marking letters and numbers according to Morse code. Therefore, the telegraph acts as a communication system, a message transmission system (and not just electrical impulses, which are actually only transmitted) only when a person looks at the sent and received impulses as what something is indicated by. Only an appropriate attitude to these impulses "transforms" them (for those who treat them that way) into a means of communication.

And with the advent of the wired telephone, only the fact has changed that with the help of electrical impulses they began to transmit to a distance the reflected, copied in the properties of these impulses, the characteristics of the sound vibrations pronounced by the interlocutors, used in human speech as a means to indicate and therefore requiring a response "like that ...". At the same time, mobile telephone communication differs from wired only in that that the pronounced sound vibrations are reflected and copied in the properties of electromagnetic pulses, not electrical ones.

But with the help of impulses and their properties, a person has the opportunity to transmit and receive not only those information that has already acquired a subjective, verbal form of expression. Nothing prevents them from obtaining completely new information, for example, from the surface of the Moon about the composition of the lunar soil. Just to do this, the lunar rover exploring the lunar surface must send pulses to Earth, the properties of which should act as elements of the system of designations of various soil properties invented by him. Referring to the characteristics of the received pulses as what the corresponding properties of the soil are indicated by, the recipients of these pulses can easily learn about the composition and properties of the lunar soil using pulses from the "lunokhod" conducting appropriate research.

Moreover, with the help of communication pulses, remote control of all kinds of automata is also carried out, the possibility of which is provided by the ability of the machine brain to respond to impulses coming to it "from the outside" as something that requires a certain correction of its management activities. And because a person is forced to represent all his management teams for the machine brain with the help of zeros and ones (while switching to machine language), the essence of the matter does not change: in any case, the brain's response to impulses is predetermined not so much by their properties as by its internal structure, providing one or another version of its "smart" reacting to carriers of certain properties.

But the same thing, in principle, happens in the work of a computer. And his brain also reacts to the impulses coming to him, first of all, taking into account their non-physical characteristics. He reacts to them as to what the zeros and ones are marked with and what requires a pre-planned reaction from him (depending on the specific set of the "package" of pulses received by him in the role of designators of zeros and ones).

And isn't it the same ability of a person's brain that he uses to find out about the properties of body B, which gave rise to this dent, with the help of a discovered dent in body A? Does he not at the same time treat the dent of body A, which has become a property of this body, as something in which the properties of body B are reflected? Moreover, only such an attitude "transforms" (in the perception of the corresponding person) the dent of body A into a reflection of the properties of body B.

And where do the roots of such interesting phenomena as signals and signs go? Looking into the literature available on this topic, we will find that modern signal theories are based on the idea that "the common property of all signals is the ability to transfer information" ^{[9, p. 2]}, and a sign is most often defined as "a material, sensually perceived object, event or action, acting in cognition as an indication, designation or representative of another object, event or action..." ^{[6, p. 225]}. But in both cases we are dealing with misconceptions. And that's why.

As you know, the concepts of signal and sign arose long before the advent of the information vision of the world. Moreover, these concepts are used, as suggested by the experience of their use, to indicate what is (acts, turns out to be) for a person all that is customary to use in place of certain verbal requirements, instructions or wishes. And this means that even here we come across concepts-statuses. And therefore – with ideal phenomena hiding behind these concepts. I.e., only what is some kind of sign or signal is available to the senses, and not what (what sign or signal) it is. And here, too, the difference between "is" and "is" should be taken into account.

People in everyday life simply do not realize the ideality of a lot of what they are dealing with. After all, in fact, a person reading something does not see letters, and listening to someone, does not hear words (he sees and hears at the same time only what letters and words turn out to be only in his perception, in his consciousness). And letters, and words, and tools, and food, and clothes, and in general everything that something or someone is, acts or turns out to be, a person "sees" only with his mind, at the level of which the human brain shows the same ability to take into account sensually inaccessible characteristics what is available to the senses. And the presence in human speech of words such as "is", "acts" or "turns out" just indicates the manifestation of the human brain of its attributive ability at the conceptual level of management activities.

Thus, such common phenomena as signals and signs have nothing to do with information as something "encoded". But their origin is directly related to the ability of the brain of self-governing systems to respond to something sensually accessible, taking into account its characteristics such as "something that requires some kind of predetermined reaction." Without the manifestation of such an ability by a management body, nothing in the world turns out to be either a sign or a signal. In addition, one way or another, something may turn out to be only in the perception of the governing bodies of self-governing systems, in which the perceived is endowed with an appropriate (specified characteristic) role, function. No impulses by themselves (i.e., outside the activity of the brain of a self-governing system, which shows its ability to respond to them "as to ...") are signals or signs. At the same time, the impulses entering the brain of a self-governing system cause a "not quite physical" reaction in it, not because they allegedly carry something other than their own properties and characteristics, but because such a reaction to their appearance is predetermined by its structure. They are not "loaded" in his activity with anything other than their own properties and the role of "something that requires a certain reaction".

  And as a result, we come to an important conclusion for solving the problem of information: for the successful operation of all control and communication systems, there is absolutely no need for communication and control impulses to carry something other than their own properties and features.The possibility of using material impulses and in general something sensually accessible as a means of communication, control, cognition and storage of any information is provided by the corresponding abilities of the governing bodies of self-governing systems, within the framework of which the specified use is carried out. And everything points to the fact that it is the question of what makes something tangible suitable for such use that has turned out to be a stumbling block for communication and management theorists, and not overcome.

5.      How did the problem of information begin and what is its essence and solution?

And coming to the consideration of the problem of information directly, we immediately note that it did not arise at all with the advent of the very concept of information. As long as this concept was used as a synonym for the concepts of "mixing" and "communication", there were no problems. Everything has changed since the middle of the twentieth century due to the widespread development and intensive introduction of various communication and management systems into everyday life. At the same time, practice turned out to be far ahead of theory. There is an urgent need to explain the general principle of operation of these systems. And first of all, it was necessary to explain how people manage to transmit all kinds of information - messages, information and management teams – using communication and control impulses.

 This is where a purely mechanistic idea appeared, explaining the possibility of using impulses to transmit information by the fact that this information is supposedly "encoded" into the structure of the transmitted impulses and thus moves with them. The idea, which is essentially a continuation and "development" of an illusion common at the everyday level of human consciousness and consists in the fact that people think that when they communicate they receive some information along with the letters they receive and along with the sounds they hear when talking to each other. And since there was no other explanation, they began to explain everything related to the management, receipt, transfer and storage of all kinds of knowledge. Moreover, the fact that in the end the idea of coding turned out to be tied primarily to the concept of information (and not to the concepts of "information" or "message") has no fundamental significance. It is important that at the same time a fairly stable image of information has developed as a kind of "horseman" riding one or another "information carrier". And also the fact that the appearance in people's minds of this image, which arose on the basis of a household illusion, elevated by the advent of the idea of encoding information to the rank of a scientific theory, was perceived by scientists as the result of the discovery of a previously unknown "information phenomenon" (see, for example, ^[15]). This image itself became the personification of a new, "informational" vision of the world.

But the fact is that there was no real explanation of the work of communication and control systems with the advent of the idea of encoding information, because the question immediately arose about what information is as something encoded into material structures and moved and stored with them. This idea, built on an illusion, gave rise only to the illusion of some kind of explanation for their work. At the same time, the gap between practice and theory remained virtually unchanged. And how could it be reduced if practitioners engaged in the creation of "smart" devices do not realize that they endow these devices with "intelligence" by providing them with the ability to respond "how to...", and the theorists of such devices rant about "information processing" as the basis for the operation of these devices, not noticing that in practice, the words about encoding and decoding information hide only the transition from one system of notation of transmitted information to another and nothing more. And as a result, this gap was supplemented by other negative phenomena for science.

First of all, the idea of encoding information has led to an undisguised transformation of the content of the concept of information: she made this concept at least ambiguous (speaking, for example, about the truthfulness or value of information, we are talking about information as a synonym for information, and speaking about its encoding and decoding, we are talking about something else). At the same time, one cannot but agree that "the most important task in determining information is to find the criterion that allows us to distinguish information from all other phenomena" ^{[10, p. 215]}. So the far-fetched "property" of being encoded into material structures for joint movement has become a distinctive feature of the qualitatively new content of the concept of information since the appearance of this idea. But the main thing is that it was with its appearance and spread that science embarked on the path of delusion, on which it faced the problem of information in its unsuccessful attempts to understand the nature of what, according to the theorists, should be encoded into material structures for joint movement. Science turned out to be at a dead end, and this dead end was inevitable, since nothing objectively existing can possess such properties that were attributed to information by the idea of encoding it and moving it together with something material. And that's why.

Firstly, the carrier of such properties cannot be something material or materially conditioned. The assumption of the materiality of information contradicts the very idea of encoding it for the sake of moving it, since everything material is able to move completely independently, without anyone's help.

 And secondly, something ideal cannot objectively be the bearer of such properties. The fact is that ideal phenomena by their very nature have no spatial localization (as described in more detail in ^[3] and ^[4]). Therefore, to talk about some kind of their introduction into something spatially localized and their joint movement in space means to contradict the very essence of these phenomena.

It turns out that information, understood as something encoded into a material structure and moved along with it, is, by its main distinguishing feature, incompatible neither with materiality nor with the ideality of its origin. But, as it was shown in the first part of the article, objectively in the human-cognizable world there is only that which is materially or, as ideal phenomena, materially conditioned. Everything else exists only in human consciousness, having only a subjective form of expression. This means that there is no objective content behind the concept of information in its "updated" (the idea of encoding information) understanding. The new content that was imposed on the concept of information by the founders of the information vision of the world is incompatible with any material conditionality of this content. This means that, due to the changed semantic content, the concept of information turned out to be on a par with such infamous concepts as phlogiston and hydrogen. This forced confession contains the solution to the problem of information.

Thus, the colossus of the information vision of the world turned out to be on clay feet. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it was the idea of encoding information that generated a wave of euphoria from the allegedly discovered phenomenon of encoding information and the new and unlimited possibilities of cognition of the world that opened up with this discovery. It also splashed out on the pages of philosophical publications. "The development of generalized ideas about information had ideological consequences. The picture of the Universe, based on a physicalist, mass-energy vision of the world, was supplemented by a third fundamental parameter – the organization of objects. Determinism was supplemented by the idea of informational causation, i.e. the energetically low-power interaction of objects that ensures the exchange of information. In the picture of the world, which takes into account such a causation, it is already recorded that in nature there are not only "horses", but also "horsemen"" ^{[6, p. 256]}.

But here I immediately want to ask, and in what, in fact, did this "development of generalized ideas about information" manifest itself? Has there been any generally accepted understanding of what information is as something encoded? After all, the philosophers themselves admit that "the history of science, perhaps, does not know such contradictory interpretations as fall to the share of this category" ^{[10, p. 56]}. Or is this development manifested in the breadth of contradictory ideas about information, in which it has not yet been canonized, except perhaps to the face of saints? Or is it in its arbitrary proclamation of one of the foundations of the Universe without any attempts to figure out whether this "foundation" satisfies the necessary condition for the objectivity of its existence, i.e. is it compatible with any form of its own expression, manifestation?

 And how can we not recall the fateful words for the development of the theory of communication and control systems, uttered by the father of cybernetics N. Wiener in the middle of the last century. "... The mechanical brain does not secrete the thought, "as the liver secretes bile."..and it does not release it in the form of energy, like muscles. Information is information, not matter and not energy. The kind of materialism that does not recognize this cannot be viable at the present time" ^{[11, p. 166]}. So the question is, to what extent did these words of his turn out to be prophetic, prescient?

 And here we have to state that there are no new grains of truth in them, but only grains of error associated with the idea of what underlies the work of any brain and what ensures the viability of materialism.

Yes, the machine brain (as well as any other) does not really secrete thought, i.e. some knowledge of how the liver secretes bile, and does not secrete it in the form of energy, like muscles. But this was known even before the "information vision of the world". And in this study, it was revealed that he does not produce, does not secrete it in any other form. Knowledge appears in the brain's activity not as something generated and isolated by it, but as what impulses coming to it "from the outside" turn out to be in its activity due to its non-physical reaction to their appearance, taking into account their connection with the external factors that gave rise to them. And it is present in his activity only as an ideal phenomenon (manifesting its presence only in the corresponding reaction of the brain to the impulses coming to him). Therefore, by assigning a central role in his idea of the "thinking" process of the machine brain to something encoded (i.e., replacing "secreted" with "encoded"), N. Wiener was mistaken. Just as he was mistaken in his conclusion about the non-viability of materialism, which does not recognize the "secret of thought" in the form of any encoded information. He simply could not notice that in fact an idea is not viable, its content is incompatible with the recognition of the material conditionality of all phenomena of the world known by man (including those phenomena that underlie the operation of communication and control systems) and thereby with any objective filling of this content; an idea that carries a hidden and unsolvable problem within the framework of this idea, which is essentially the birthmark of this idea.

As noted by the famous theoretical physicist R. Feynman, "you can't explain tooks with all sorts of nooks." But it is precisely with this type of quasi-scientific explanations that the origin of the problem of information is connected. After all, it was only really discovered that there is something in communication and control systems that allows using communication and control pulses as a means of communication and control. The idea explaining the possibility of such their use by encoding information led to the fact that instead of the question of what is "what allows the use of impulses ..." philosophers and natural scientists began to explore the question of what is "what is encoded into material structures and moves with them." That is, the subject of reflection was not what was discovered, but what was invented in connection with what was discovered, but presented at the same time as something discovered. In other words, instead of identifying the essence of the discovered "tuk", the researchers began to identify the essence of the "nuk" born by the human mind with its imaginary properties, which in advance doomed this search to failure due to the hidden incompatibility of these properties with any of their material conditionality, i.e. they engaged in myth-making.

Thus, we have revealed that the problem of information hides an erroneous answer to the question of what makes it possible to use communication and control pulses as a means of communication and control. But let's pay some attention to what is usually presented as almost direct proof of the existence of encoded information. And first of all, we are talking about what is commonly called the "measurement of information" contained in something.

As you know, when communicating with "smart" devices, a person has to switch to a machine language in which all our letters, numbers and the requirements expressed with their help for the behavior of these devices are represented in the form of one or another set of zeros and ones, called "bits", units of measurement of information, and essentially representing elements of the binary alphabet, binary notation system. At the same time, the procedure for measuring the amount of information allegedly contained in a message is, in fact, reduced to identifying how many zeros and ones are required to "translate" this message from the usual human alphabet to the "machine" alphabet. But it is here that the information vision of the world encounters a pitfall, since zeros and ones (as what certain written figures are for a person) represent something sensually accessible, which information is not. Therefore, it is illegal to call zeros and ones bits (i.e. elementary particles) of information.

In addition, it is necessary to take into account the fact that zeros and ones are not transmitted over the wires, and therefore, directly for the machine brain itself, the role of zeros and ones is played by the impulses coming to it (causing it to have a predetermined reaction "how to ..." corresponding to the appearance of these numbers, which ensures the specified role of these impulses). In this case, the number of pulses required to transmit a message corresponds to the number of zeros and ones required to translate this message into machine language. But in general, all this means that the procedure presented as "measuring information" is not actually such and therefore is not any proof of the objective presence of any information in anything.

But there is no argument in favor of an information vision of the world and what is commonly called "information impact", "information cause", which, according to proponents of such a vision of the world, "... should already be compared with a mythical creature – with a man-horse, or centaur" ^{[12, p. 86]}.

 Firstly, the assumption of informational influence implicitly contradicts the idea of encoding information, since interaction with one's environment is a distinctive feature of all material things, and what is itself material does not require any encoding into something material for its spatial movement.

And secondly, in fact, behind the words about the impact of information on someone's behavior lies the impact, the influence that is exerted on the behavior of a self-governing system by the activity of its self-governing body, in response to the impulses coming to it that "include" (in accordance with the program of self-government) its ability to behave in one way or another. Therefore, the arguments about the so-called "informational influence" on the behavior of material systems are nothing more than an example of myth-making in the fog of information vision of the world, which is fertile for such creativity.

6.      About the philosophy of information and its basic concepts.

The founder of the Russian philosophy of information is considered to be A. D. Ursula, who in 1968 published a philosophical essay on the nature of information ^[13], which talks about the need to create some kind of scientific basis for the process of information development of society and further transition to the noospheric stage of civilization development. At the same time, the author of the essay inextricably connects the category of information with the categories of reflection and difference, diversity, and presents the process of cognition in the information aspect – as a process of transferring objectively existing diversity to a cognizing subject. In his opinion, the information allegedly contained in objects is, as it were, information "in itself", potential, which, as a result of cognition, turns into relevant information – into information of images, information "for us". And on this basis, it is concluded that "... in the objective world and in consciousness there are different types of information. The first, as a result of reflection, cognition, is recoded into the second, one type of information passes into another" [ibid., p. 200]. As for the definition of information, he believes that it "can be defined in the most general case as reflected diversity. Information is the variety that one object contains about another object in the process of their interaction" [ibid., p. 228].

But, the question is, how significant are arguments about different types of information "in the objective world" for science, if in these arguments it is identified with diversity? Wouldn't it be easier to talk about the types of diversity at once? But the above definition of information also raises puzzling questions, since it is very difficult to imagine and thus understand how this one object can "contain diversity about another object." And is it possible to agree with the statement that "in scientific terms, the concept of "information" covers both the information that people exchange with each other and information that exists independently of people" [ibid., p. 68]. Is anyone really ready to believe that information about anything, i.e. knowledge, can exist on its own, i.e. outside the activity of someone's brain?

But it was in this line of arbitrary statements and definitions, which often contradict each other, that those general ideas about information began to develop (if this word is applicable here), which found expression in the philosophy of information, which made considerable efforts to ensure that the concept of information acquired the status of a philosophical category, and acted as the main ideologist and a propagandist of the information vision of the world. It is its representatives who do not miss the opportunity to state that "a fairly large number of scientific papers have already been published today, where it is rightly noted that understanding the defining role of information in all information processes of nature and society without exception opens up a completely new, informational Picture of the World, which differs significantly from the traditional material and energy Picture of the universe that dominated science since the time of Descartes and Newton almost to the end of the twentieth century" ^{[14, p. 5]}.

Well, indeed, the picture of the world proposed by the philosophy of information differs significantly from the purely materialistic one traditional for science. However, how can the bearers of the information view of the world have confidence that the information picture of the world is a step forward and not backward compared to the traditional, pre-information one?

And it follows, not least from the widespread misconception that "from the point of view of supporters of materialism, nothing exists in the real world except matter and energy... Thus, the material world is a world filled with moving matter and energy, and there is simply no other world (other reality). It is precisely this material and energy picture of the world that has dominated science since the time of Descartes and Newton. There is no place in it for another kind of reality – ideal reality, although all life practice convinces us that such a reality also exists" ^{[15, p. 63]}. Only such a distorted, primitive view of materialism allows us to speak of it as some kind of outdated, outdated view of the world.

There is no dispute that it is impossible to explain the obvious possibility of transmitting and storing any information with the help of material bodies and processes by the properties of these bodies and processes themselves, i.e., by the mere materiality of the "carriers and keepers" of information. But this is not required by materialism in its understanding, in which we are talking about the material conditionality of all phenomena of the world known by man, including such phenomena as the existence, transmission and storage of information, knowledge. And having taken up the identification of the material conditionality of these phenomena, it turns out that they are connected not so much with the material properties of bodies and processes, as with the materially conditioned ability of certain systems that have reached the level of self-government in their development. And first of all, with the ability of their self–government bodies to take into account in their management activities such characteristics of impulses coming to them "from the outside" that have no expression in these impulses themselves. It reveals something, the realization of which allows the theory of communication and management to finally catch up with practice.

The erroneous idea of materialism has become fertile ground for the cultivation and dissemination of an informational vision of the world, allegedly allowing to overcome the "narrow limits of materialism". Moreover, it also prevented the discovery that the "triumph of a qualitatively new vision of the world" led only to collective myth-making on the topic of such a vision of the world. And what is noteworthy is that the philosophy of information turned out to be just a tool of such creativity, and not at all a judge, as its status as a science of the most general properties and patterns of everything that can declare its existence requires. In his own fantasies, this myth-making, which began with the ascension of the concept of information to the rank of a philosophical category, turned out to be very diverse.

Thus, some believe that "information is a property of all matter, since the property of all matter, of all levels of its development, is reflection" ^{[16, p. 138]}. These are supporters of the attributive concept of information, they look at it as a kind of attribute of matter. At the same time, as, for example, in the monograph of academician B. B. Kadomtsev ^[17], the whole world around us is presented as a set of information-open systems that continuously interact with each other through information influence. Information supposedly permeates all levels of the organization of matter and determines the direction of development of all evolutionary processes in the universe, is the main root cause under the influence of which evolution is carried out. At the same time, expediency and the possibility of free choice are presented as the result of the development of complex systems with "information" behavior, "volitional principle" is given credit to "information development", in which the information aspects of the behavior of systems "come to the fore, and dynamics creates only the basis for information development" [ibid., p. 346].

Others believe that "information is not a material object or process. In their opinion, it is a phenomenon of ideal reality" ^{[1, p. 56]}. These are supporters of the functional concept of information, according to which information is the result (function) of the activity of human consciousness and therefore it cannot exist in inanimate nature. "However, at the same time, the existence of information in biological objects is also allowed, which is difficult to deny" ^{[18, p. 44]}.

Still others believe that "the nature of information is not ideal, and not material, but ambivalent," i.e. it represents a kind of single substance, but with two opposite faces, irreducible to one another" ^{[19, p. 177]}.

The fourth see her "duplicity", her dual nature in another: "...On the one hand, information always exists in the material embodiment of some process that is indifferent to its content. On the other hand, the content of the information is a structure as such, representing the structure of the original, information about which it carries. As an objective phenomenon, information is an overlay of the original structure on the structure of the process in the information system" ^{[12, p. 81]}.

And in Gukhman V. B.'s monograph ^[20], also devoted to the "phenomenon of information", we are talking about attributive and functional information as complementary forms of its existence. Moreover, it talks about a certain physics of information, about certain laws of information preservation, which at the same time does not prevent it from being qualitatively equated with knowledge, presenting the latter as a kind of higher form of information.

And as can be seen from all the above, no one has any doubts about the very discovery of the "phenomenon of information". Although some researchers at the same time claim that "the existence of information in inanimate nature continues to remain unproven ^{[21, p. 215]}.

And as a result, instead of engaging in a deep and comprehensive assessment of the idea that filled the concept of information with qualitatively new content, philosophy engaged in a comprehensive study of the allegedly discovered phenomenon of information and thereby went about the idea of scientifically "developing" the everyday illusion of transmitting information along with letters or human-uttered sounds. She became a willing servant of this idea, incompatible with any objective content of its content. Therefore, in the end, absolutely all concepts of information put forward by the philosophy of information are erroneous: they contradict either the very idea of encoding information, or the necessary condition for the objectivity of the content of concepts and judgments that we have identified.

Thus, the idea of information as some kind of attribute of matter fundamentally contradicts the idea of information as something encoded into material structures and moved and stored together with them, since, being an attribute of matter, it does not need anyone's "outside" help to move it, and thus I wouldn't need any coding into something tangible at all. On the other hand, the idea of it as some kind of ideal phenomenon, i.e. as a product or function of someone's consciousness, contradicts the requirement of its localization in a certain material structure for joint movement. For the same reasons, the ambivalent concept of information, which is a kind of conglomerate of the material with the ideal, is also erroneous. The assumption of the materially ideal two-facedness of information does not take into account the incompatibility of the properties of information fundamental to the informational vision of the world with any of these hypothetical faces of information.

And as for the supposedly inextricable connection of information with the universal property of reflection, then, as follows from the essence of the reflection property that we have identified, the hypothetical property of "encoding" has nothing to do with this fundamental property of the material world.

But information cannot be an independent entity either, since the properties attributed to it by the information vision of the world are incompatible with its having any form of expression of its own, without which all talk about information as some kind of independent entity is an empty phrase. At the same time, such concepts of information do not stand up to criticism, in which it is declared a special entity using the concept of reality. Thus, in K. Kolin's philosophy of information, the material world is presented as a kind of integral part of the "reality" considered by him and the idea is put forward that there is also a "world of reflection" in such a reality as a kind of channel of information interaction between the physical world and the world of consciousness ^[22]. And on the basis of such ideas, he proposes to move to a new understanding of the scientific picture of the world and the content of the main question of philosophy, formulating it as "the relation of matter to information" ^[23]. But how can the material world be an integral part of something else, whatever it is called? To talk about matter as an integral part of a certain reality means to have very vague ideas about what matter is and what reality is.

But reality, like any other phenomenon of the world known by man, of which man himself is an integral part, is derived from the materiality of this world. At the same time, the reality of a person is the content of his feelings, experiences, images and ideas (both about himself and about the outside world). But it is important not to get confused here: all this is the reality of a person, but it is not his reality, because all this turns out to be reality only in the perception of the human brain, only in its attitude to all this as something that allows it to manage "knowledgeably", i.e. taking into account the internal needs of a person and external for He has circumstances. These are as different things as, for example, an object lying on a table and being a spoon, and what it is for a person and what is present only in the human head in the verbal image of "what is eaten." At the same time, the objective reality of a person is such a side of his sensations, images and representations, which does not depend on the activity of the human brain that gave rise to these subjective copies of the material world and which is commonly called the content of the result of reflection, and subjective reality is such a side of the result of his reflective activity, which depends on the brain itself, being the form and method of its implementation of this activities.

As we can see, in any case, human reality is a phenomenon that does not go beyond the reflective activity of the human brain. Therefore, it is extremely rash to consider the material world as an integral part of reality. Here, apparently, it is misleading that the scope of the concept of "reality" is wider than the scope of the concept of "material world". However, in fact, such a ratio of the volumes of their content indicates only that the content of the concept of reality is images not only of what is accessible to the senses, but also of what is present only in human heads.

But, having touched on the topic of reality, we will have to return to the original principles of materialism in order to clarify one more thing. We are talking about such Leninist words as: "... the only "property" of matter, with the recognition of which philosophical materialism is associated, is the property of being an objective reality, existing outside our consciousness" ^{[2, p. 255]}, and "...matter is an objective reality given to us in sensation" [ibid., p. 142]. While fully agreeing that the materialistic teaching is inextricably linked with the recognition of objective reality, it is still impossible to agree with the implicit identification of matter (meaning everything material by it) with objective reality, equivalent to identifying what exists completely independently of the human brain, with what the content of those born of it appears in its activity images, products of his reflective activity (and what is present in his activity as an ideal phenomenon). The inadmissibility of such identification is also indicated by the important fact that the objective reality for a person is all that is ideal that is present in the activities of the governing bodies of self-governing systems, completely independent of the activity of the human brain.

Thus, only a vague idea of the relationship between the material world and reality allows us to put forward information as a kind of foundation of the universe, arguing that "information is a universal fundamental property of reality" ^{[15, p. 75]}. And how can I not remember the words once said by F. Engels: "from the fact that we will include the shoemaker's brush in a single category with mammals, it will not grow mammary glands yet" ^{[24, p. 41]}.

But one cannot agree with such statements by representatives of the philosophy of information, as if "there is a struggle between materialists and idealists around understanding the nature of information in philosophy. The latter try to detach information from matter, turn it into some kind of spiritual substance, or present it as a complex of sensations, experiences of the subject... It is quite clear that reasoned criticism of idealistic (as well as metaphysical) interpretations of the concept of information presupposes the disclosure of its actual content. Its leading principle is the position related to the materialistic solution of the main issue of philosophy that information is a property of matter" ^{[13, pp. 16-17]}.

In fact, the dispute over understanding the nature of information is not at all "a battle between materialists and idealists, which it is high time to declare a draw, since the arguments are repeated" ^{[25, p. 177]}. The fact is that almost all the participants in this dispute answer the basic question of philosophy in a completely materialistic way. And materialists are not forbidden to classify this or that mysterious phenomenon as ideal. Therefore, this is a dispute mainly between materialists, but those whose materialism finds expression only in the form of recognition of the primacy of matter relative to consciousness and therefore did not become for them a "sniff of objective truth", did not make them doubt the very idea of encoding information. And only without having a clear and sufficiently deep understanding of the criteria of materiality, ideality and objectivity, it can be argued that "concepts and approaches presented within the framework of the metaphysical project of science, revealing the nature of information from both idealistic and materialistic positions, are fully justified and consistent, and therefore have the right to exist" ^{[26, p. 247]}.

7. Conclusion.

As it turned out in the course of this study, the immediate cause of the information problem is the mechanistic idea of encoding information, born in the minds of communication and control theorists based on a household illusion. An idea that has become widespread in various fields of science and technology and was enthusiastically picked up by philosophers who saw in it some tempting outlines of a qualitatively new Picture of the universe. "The analysis of philosophical dissertations and publications after 2000 shows that philosophy went along with natural science concepts, generating simulacra of information based on various disciplinary concepts and their combinations" ^{[27, p. 14]}.

However, in the course of this study, it was also discovered that, ultimately, the root of the information problem is still not in natural scientific materialism, not in its "methodological insufficiency, "thoughtlessness," lack of rigor, inconsistency, unsystematic conduct of a materialistic answer to the main question of philosophy, especially in relation to issues beyond the competence natural sciences" ^{[6, p. 378]}, and in the existing incompleteness of the materialistic theory of knowledge and thus in the absence of a clear idea of the mechanism of the appearance and "displacement" of the ideal in the material world. The mechanism that no management process can do without. At the same time, it was prevented from "completing" the theory of knowledge, first of all, by the fact that materialism in the minds of materialists was presented, as a rule, only at the level of an appropriate answer to the main question of philosophy, i.e. only an "initial", only a "cautious" form of its expression.

And as a result, it turned out that in terms of the practical use of materialism as a tool of cognition, materialistically thinking representatives of the natural sciences differ little from materialistic philosophers, since the materialism of both finds expression only in the form of recognition of reality independent of man. Which, according to the author, is a serious omission for philosophical materialism. That "cautious" form of materialism, which they adhere to, not daring to follow the principle of materialistic monism, is extremely ineffective and impotent outside the framework of the relationship between matter and consciousness. It does not allow us to take full advantage of the practically inexhaustible heuristic potential of materialistic teaching. Such an important regularity of the existence of the human-cognizable world, reflected in the principle of materialistic monism, as the material conditionality of absolutely all its phenomena, does not find direct expression in it. In this form of materialism, there is no awareness that only that which is materially conditioned can be objective, and, consequently, that in order to recognize the objectivity of a phenomenon, it is not enough to proclaim its independence from human consciousness; for this, first of all, it is necessary to show its material conditionality. It is precisely this kind of "nominal", "formal" materialism that allows us to consider as an objective reality, firstly, such phenomena, which, although not a product of human consciousness, are impossible without its active support: these are accidents, and opportunities, and "bifurcation points" (which is more detailed in ^[4]), and time (which is more detailed in ^[3]), and signs with signals, and in general everything that something or someone is for someone (performs, it turns out). And secondly, there are also some products of consciousness itself, which are presented as phenomena of nature, i.e., which are labeled "exists objectively" (as happened with information understood as "something encoded").

The acute shortage of the prevalence of a full-fledged form of materialism, represented by the principle of materialistic monism, precisely explains, in the author's opinion, the fact that materialistically minded philosophers meekly "swallowed" the idea of encoding information and thereby turned out to be led by those who directed the science of communication and management on the path of error. Having no reliable reference point in their heads for moving towards the truth, they simply went where most of the "naturalists" went. And in the end, they led this mass movement into a dead end of the problem of information, in every possible way adjusting the idea of the general structure of the universe to the fiction of the existence of something encoded into everything material. It follows that the lack of commitment to the consistent implementation of the principle of materialistic monism contains a much greater "strategic threat to the future of civilization" than the one discussed at the very beginning of this article and which is associated with a misunderstanding of the general principle of operation of all "smart" devices.

Therefore, it is very important to realize, firstly, that the materialistic answer to the main question of philosophy, along which the watershed between idealists and materialists runs, is only the first step towards understanding the most general structure of the world known by man with the help of the senses and concepts of the world. Secondly, that the most important next step on this path is the recognition that matter is primary in relation to absolutely all phenomena of the world reflected by man.  And thirdly (and this is the main thing today) - that this principle of materialistic monism must be adopted, steadily following it in all scientific and theoretical research, seeing in it a reflection of the foundations of the entire world order and thereby a reliable guide to the knowledge of the essence of absolutely all mysterious phenomena.

It was only by coming to such an awareness that it was possible to discover the natural mechanism of control and cognition, in which the author sees, on the one hand, the missing link of the materialistic theory of knowledge, and on the other, the cherished key to solving the problem of information, its appearance is inextricably linked with the absence of this link.