The process-informativeness of nature Jeroen B.J.

van Dijk, Eindhoven The Netherlands (abstract 600 words) In mainstream physics and its descendent special sciences two complementary modes of description are available: the external/functional and the internal/structural mode (cf. Rosen 108) both of which are exophysical. Accordingly, target systems can be represented by 1) focussing primarily on external in- and outputs while largely neglecting their inner-system structural details, or by 2) zooming in on internal features (such as microstates and their temporal evolution) while mostly ignoring external influences. Both ways of exophysical representation are closely affiliated with information theory. On the one hand, external descriptions can be seen as compatible with the data communication diagrams in information theory, where input signals are extracted from an external information source, fed through signal-modifying system components, and then exported as processed output data. Internal descriptions, on the other hand, typically model their target systems via microstates that can statistically be treated the same as data string configurations in information-theoretical settings hereby providing mainstream physics with a much-needed statistical justification of its empirical data. So, although the roots of what we now call mainstream physics started to develop much earlier than those of information theory, the latter discipline has currently evolved into an established background theory for the former. Unfortunately, however, this togetherness has not come entirely without down-sides. Particularly, by treating nature as if it were an external source of information from which empirical data can be extracted and compressed into evermore accurate physical equations, researchers are already beforehand specifying it in terms of the symbol-devoted protocols of our conventional information theories. In this way, arguably, the sign is authorized before the actual data (Van Dijk 78). This argument is usually neutralized by pointing out that measurement practice (responsible for data acquisition) and theory formation (responsible for associating data with symbolry) evolve together in a thoroughly entangled way (Van Fraassen 138). However, the obvious next issue how to acquire data about this evolution of data acquisition itself simply goes beyond the capabilities of exophysical representation. That is, by sticking to exophysical representation, eventually, self-reference and vicious circularity will be invoked. Moreover, the very act of dividing nature into a dedicated target and subject side always requires a pre-available initial observer whose conscious experience should according to exophysical representation be found in an enclosed center of subjectivity. However, a search for any such center will call forth the homunculus problem (cf. Edelman and Tononi 94), thus inevitably triggering infinite regress. The only way to avoid these problems altogether, is to abandon the exophysical methodology and acknowledge natures processual wholeness. Contrary to what exophysical representation might imply, subjectivity cannot be pinned down as if it were a localizable target-representing subsystem of nature (Ibid.). Instead, subjectivity is a primordial nonrepresentational aspect of nature, inherent in the mutual sensitivity among process-structures for each others effluent processuality. As is meticulously elaborated on in Reg Cahills nonexophysical Process Physics, natures coupled process-structures participate in a pancreative universal interactionism (cf. Griffin, endnote 5) thus affecting each other on and across all levels of organization from the stochastic subquantum realm to the cosmic expanse. Like so, they actively in-form (i.e. make a difference to; cf. Bateson 315) each others functional-

structural organization, thus forming one huge process-in-formative whole of immensely rich and complex forms of organization, including conscious organisms like ourselves. Accordingly, our higher-order conscious experience follows from natures rudimentary co-informativeness as a highly evolved confluent culmination of its mutually sensitive psychophysical activity patterns. And in so far as the mind-brain can be identified as the leading process-structure in facilitating this higher-order consciousness, it may be considered a self-experiential endo-sensorium embedded within the greater processinformative omni-sensorium which is nature.

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