The artificial intelligence is ordinarilystored as programmes in electronic computers,
but, in principle,mechanical computers may be used as well. The moves of the
mechanicalcomputer are subordinated to the requirements of the informational
structures carried by the computer. So, artificial intelligenceis not generated by
the laws in mechanics or electronics. It isinformation which rules the mechanical or
the electronic moveso as to suit a certain field of reality. The informational
structuresmake decisions with respect to this reality and use the available
electronic and mechanical devices in their play in this reality.
Information in itself is neither substance nor field; it is information
in its own right, a property of the existence which must be understood
in its intricate relation with the underlying support.
Let us now imagine that Aristotle were not
ignorant of the concept of information, and examine the consequences.
As was shown above, Aristotle understood the form as something
like order and music, or similar determinations. So, the form
is the one which gives structure. In the light of the concept
of the ring of the existence, it is information which gives structure.
With Aristotle, the form would be the profound information, but
it is likewise "social" information when substance are
used to build houses, cars or artistic works in compliance with
earlier projects. Information is structure-giving in matter, in
substance or in things. That is why the notion of information,
qua profound information, is extremely general, like the
notion of matter itself. Nowadays, we can no longer think of matter
in defect of information. Without information, matter would reduce
to energymatter and non-structured infomatter. Otherwise stated,
it would reduce to two prime substances which would be in orthoexistence,
would generate no universe, no consciousness and would have no
self-consciousness. It would be as if matter did not exist in
a wholesome way (privation in Aristotle's terms), which
would be absurd. That is why we cannot dispense with information
in conceiving both the profound matter and the matter in substances,
to say nothing of the role of the information in consciousness.
In defect of information, we can no longer cogitate the dialectics
of matter. We can then righteously ask why principles like 'energymatter'
and 'information' having the energymatter itself as support should
not be sufficient. Why should we resort to the concept of informatter
? One may accept these two principles as sufficient, yet hosts
of phenomena related to the living realm and the function of the
nervous system were conducive to the concept of informaterial
field and then to informatter, as sensibility properties which
maintain the difference between the substance of the energymatter
and that of the informatter.
That the concept of information was not that
far from Aristotle's view is obvious as he stated the necessary
condition of a reason - not necessarily a divine Reason - to be
preposited to the world:
"What must be the mode of existence
of reason, if it is the most divine thing in the world ?
- Ifit thinks nothing, it is no better than a man asleep.
- If itthinks, but its thinking depends on something else, it being itself
only potency, not it but its thinking will be the best thing.
- What does it think ? Itself or something else ? If the latter,
either the same object always or different things at different
times" (Metaphysics, XII, 9, 1074b).
An idea prefiguring that of the ring of the
existence may be found elsewhere in his Metaphysics:
"Sincenothing accidental is prior to the essential, if chance is the
cause of the universe, reason and nature are prior causes"
(Metaphysics, XI, 8, 1065a).
However, to resort tonature again as a source for the generation of a universe means
to favour the principle of the self-consistency of the material
world. And the reason stored in the profound information is no
doubt statical, dormant and uncogitating. This does not however
mean that it cannot be changed. Thought arises in the universe
with some kind of rudimentary awareness, like that found in animals,
with the higher consciousness pertinent to man and society or
from the material devices developed by society.
4. Patrick Suppes' urge to revert toAristotle's concept of matter reflects the need
of present-dayscience to approach some matter more profound than that known
as the elementary particles: "It must also be recognized
that from the end of the nineteenth century and through the development
of the quantum mechanics, the acceptance of the electron as a
fundamental particle of an indivisible and fixed character with
definite mass and charge is very much in the spirit of Democritus
and atomism, rather than in the spirit of Aristotle's physics,
just as was the case a hundred years earlier in the development
of the atomic theory of matter. ... If we consider, for example,
axiomatizations of particle mechanics, we take as undefined or
primitive the set of particles but immediately attribute properties
to these particles, especially mass. As we move on to more complicated
objects like rigid bodies we attribute additional fixed properties
like those of moment of inertia. When we turn to electromagnetic
theory we encounter attribution of charge ... . Nowhere in such
discussions is there a hint of something corresponding to Aristotle's
distinction between form and
matter"7.
Given that the number of elementary particleshas become fairly large and that the
possibility to explain theworld in terms of several elementary particles is regarded
withincreasing skepticism, Suppes finds that the situation in high-energy
physics requires a scientific reconstruction of Aristotle'sconcept of matter,
which was not that obvious some fortyyears ago. His conclusions are worth citing
in extensoas his exertions toward Aristotle's concept of matter are equally
exertions toward the idea of the ring of the material world:
"From Aristotle's standpoint, the search
on the basis of the evidence available for fundamental building
blocks is a clear mistake. ... The collision of electrons and
other particles to produce new particles as observed, for example,
in cloud-chamber and other experiments is simply good Aristotelian
evidence of the change of form of matter. The cloud-chamber data
especially support Aristotle's definition of matter. As we observe
change there must be a substratum underlying that which is changing.
What is the substratum underlying the conversion of particles
into other particles, or the conversion of particles into energy
? The answer seems to me clear. We can adopt an Aristotelian theory
of matter as pure potentiality. The search for elementary particles
that are simple and homogeneous and that are the building blocks
in some spatial sense of the remaining elements of the universe
ia a mistake. There is a continual conversion of the forms of
matter into each other; there is no reason to think that one form
is more fundamental than another. The proper search at a theoretical
level is for the laws that describes these changes of form ...
. I do not mean to suggest that we can pull any detailed wide
scientific laws from Aristotle. What is valuable in his concept
is its wide applicability as a way of thinking about physical
phenomena"8.
Matter in Depths19
