Book review of Paavo Pylkkanen

Paavo Pylkkanen:
MIND, MATTER AND ACTIVE INFORMATION (Univ. of Helsinki, 1992)

Home | The whole bibliography | My book on Consciousness

Pylkkanen starts out by reviewing Bohm's idea of the "pilot wave". The quantum field contains "active information", because the form of the field determines the energy and momentum of a particle. (Bohm used the original meaning of the word "information", as "in-formation", as "that gives form"). Active information is information that is relevant to determining the movement of a particle. This information is not an opinion, it is the objective aspect of reality. Bohm interpreted this kind of information as the "mental property" of particles. Thus matter has "mental" properties, as well as physical properties.
A quantum level mediates between an underlying mental level and the physical level that we observe. Bohm turns the table on supervenience: it is not the mental that supervenes upon the physical, it is the brain states that are dependent on mental states.
On top of Bohm's theory, Pylkkanen then offers a semiotic theory of the particle: the quantum field of the particle can be regarded as containing information about the environment surrounding the particle. The form of the wave function reflects the form of the environment. This form, in turn, determines the trajectory of the particle. The quantum field is a form of representation. Semiotically speaking (and using Peirce's terminology), the quantum field is the sign, the environment is the object and the trajectory is the interpretant.