an information reservoir—a storehouse of information as randomness and correlation. However, Hemmo and Shenker (2021) have recently brought a challenge against the universality of the Landauer principle and even the ubiquity of the second law of thermodynamics on the basis of cognitive science which touches on the work of this paper - that thinking and cognition is distinct from the physics of the brain. They rightly state (Hemmo and Shenker 2021, p. 4918) Our dilemma shows that this theory is committed on a priori grounds to rejecting either the causal closure of physics or the Second Law of thermodynamics as a universal law. For those that think that the Second Law is universally true and that physics is causally closed, and want at the same time to endorse the computational theory of mind, this is bad news. It seems to us that the dilemma we have put forward for the computational theory of the mind shows that the view that the mind is essentially computational has no place in a physical world. In other words, computational neuroscience turns out to be a non-physicalist view of the mind. Fortunately, there is a good alternative, by endorsing a full blown type-type identity theory of the mind, such as Flat Physicalism, in which psychological states and processes and properties (etc.) are reduced with no remainder to physical ones. This is the only way in which a theory of mind can be compatible with physicalism. Non-reductive views in cognition and brain science are not an option. This quote initially is not easy to access, but is actually addressing a core central issue which is “Are we at heart simply sophisticated, algorithmically controlled robots?” Monod (1970) writes “living beings are chemical machines” so that everything is reduced to particles and the laws of physics. So that Hemmo and Shenker (2021) here are honest in their wrestling with the issue that the brain itself is an active and intelligent repository of information. The context is that Putnam (1975), and others have proposed what is called a computational theory of mind (Rescorla 2020) that Hemo and Shenker (2021) here are refuting. They argue that only if consciousness itself is regarded as a physical state of the brain (which would then mean that the whole of rationality reduces to simply molecules in motion), can one get coherence with a philosophical materialist position (what they refer to as “flat physicalism”). Put another way, they are effectively saying is that the independence of rationality in individual minds is not consistent with materialism (where the whole of physics is causally closed), and that the computational theory of the mind is subtly carrying a dualist presupposition whereby a non-physical cause initiates thought. They thus conclude that a materialist has to abandon “non-reductive views of cognition.” In other words, materialism has to deny that rationality has a cause independent to matter and energy. Though we do not necessarily accept the computational theory of the mind, the basic conclusion of Hemo and Shenker (2021) concerning the thermodynamics of human cognitive processes is correct, viz. that from a philosophical naturalist standpoint the second law is not being obeyed and the reason is that there is a non-material reality which is being ignored and has a significant effect on reversing the natural entropy increase. In this paper, we adopt the Biblical starting position which very definitely is not materialism, and is in fact the only position which makes sense of intelligence and information being real, but not emergent out of matter. This position states that the presence of intelligence has a definite thermodynamic effect such that the free energy in our brain synapses is raised and entropy is actually lowered. This means that our own minds cannot simply be regarded as brains running algorithmically as digital computers. The Christian presupposition has always been that we are not only matter, but created beings in the image of a far greater Mind behind the Universe (Gen. 1:27 ”God created man in His own image”, Gen. 2:7 “man became a living soul”), and therefore our rationality itself is real but non-material, and consequently is a top-down cause (see Fig. 1) which constrains the local material thermodynamics to be in a non-equilibrium state; that is, it raises the local free energy at least by the minimum Landauer value. We return to this issue of rationality in section IVA below. B. Information as coded instructions and its connection to the material substrate As mentioned in the earlier sections 1B and 1C above, information is stored by using what we have defined as a ‘machine’ (a free energy device). So, all information systems whether man-made or naturally occurring (as with DNA in living systems), sit on a substrate where locally the “letter” or “word” (i.e. the coded instructions) is in a non-equilibrium state. The Landauer principle largely accepted in the secular literature (and proven experimentally by Bérut et al. 2012) has now confirmed what the design theorists have long maintained viz. that information which is non-material has the effect of allowing low entropy regions in phase space to occur. In the earlier papers (McIntosh 2009, 2013) it was argued that information (non-material coded instructions) constrains the local thermodynamics such that the local free energy is raised by the presence of information within the system. Wherever there is information held by coded systems then there is raised free energy due to the presence of “letters” which are attached to the material substrate. Thus, in living systems the DNA coding is held together by the nucleotide bonds of the “rungs” of the double helix ladder formation of this remarkable nucleic acid. The vertical phosphate bonds are also in a raised energy state. By this is meant that the free energy bonds are positive. However more fundamentally the non-material DNA system language itself functions as an ordering principle, the result of which is to further lower the local system entropy, maintain Δg > 0 at the codon locations and organize the cellular machinery by a series of coded instructions such that each of these machines is maintained in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic state in accordance with Thermodynamic Principle (1). A brief comment is made here that we are not using the term Shannon entropy in this paper. This is because that is specifically used for considering the efficiency or otherwise of data transmission (Shannon 1948) and the number of possible states of a binary computer system of ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’. (Shannon entropy is a measure of the uncertainty of occurrence of an event, given partial information about the system). The term entropy in this paper is always referring to thermodynamic entropy (J/K) and the corollary of Gibbs free energy in J. Where a coded set of instructions is held on a substrate there will be a thermodynamic effect whereby the Gibbs free energy Δg is raised MCINTOSH Language, codes, & interaction with thermodynamics 2023 ICC 320
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