Wittgenstein on Why the Liar Paradox Belongs to a Language Game

 

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(i) Introduction

(ii) On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game

(iii) The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found

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The following passage offers us a short account of the Liar Paradox:

“[T]he classical liar paradox [] is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that ‘I am lying’. If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In ‘this sentence is a lie’ the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. [] Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction.

“If ‘this sentence is false’ is true, then it is false, but the sentence states that it is false, and if it is false, then it must be true, and so on.”

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once confronted this well-known paradox. In a discussion with Alan Turing, he said:

“Think of the case of the Liar: It is very queer in a way that this should have puzzled anyone — much more extraordinary than you might think. Because the thing works like this: if a man says ‘I am lying’ we say that it follows that he is not lying, from which it follows that he is lying and so on.”

Wittgenstein continued:

“Well, so what? You can go on like that until you are black in the face. Why not? It doesn’t matter. [I]t is just a useless language-game, and why should anyone be excited?”

There is a paradox (or contradiction) here… but so what!

In broader terms, Wittgenstein stressed two things:

1) The strong distinction which must be made between accepting contradictions within mathematics (actually, metamathematics), and accepting contradictions outside mathematics.

2) The supposed applications and consequences of these mathematical contradictions and paradoxes outside mathematics. [See note 1.]

So at least some people should “be excited” by the Liar Paradox — logicians and metamathematicians...

As for 1), Wittgenstein said (as quoted by Andrew Hodges):

“Why are people afraid of contradictions? It is easy to understand why they should be afraid of contradictions in orders, descriptions, etc. outside mathematics. The question is: Why should they be afraid of contradictions inside mathematics?”

Thus, Wittgenstein can be read as not actually questioning the logical validity or status of these paradoxes. Instead, he was making a purely philosophical point about their supposed — and many — applications and consequences outside of metamathematics. [See note 1 again.]

But what about Wittgenstein’s use of the term “language-game”?

On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game

At first glance, Wittgenstein was perfectly correct to use the philosophical term (his own) “language-game” to refer to the Liar Paradox (as well as to refer to many of the other paradoxes thrown up in what’s often called the foundations of mathematics). More correctly, these paradoxes were seen to arise within various language games.

To add to Wittgenstein himself. The Liar Paradox is internal to a language game which allows a very specific kind of self-reference…

But — again — why use the term “language game”?

Well, in which other language (or language game) would you ever find the statement, “This sentence is false”? (Even it’s supposed everyday translation — “I am a liar” — seems somewhat contrived.)

Thus, these kinds of sentence simply don’t belong to everyday languages at all. Thus, they must all belong to specific technical language games. (As do, for example, Gödel sentences.) [See note 2.]

So Kurt Gödel (for one) didn’t have any problems at all with self-reference. Indeed, he once wrote the following:

“Contrary to appearances, such a proposition involves no faulty circularity, for it only asserts that a certain well-defined formula [] is unprovable. Only subsequently (and so to speak by chance) does it turn out that this formula is precisely the one by which the proposition itself was expressed.”

On the surface, Wittgenstein would have had no problems with the impeccable logic of that passage from Gödel.

However, he might have argued that it’s not a question of what Gödel called “faulty circularity”. Perhaps, instead, it’s also about whether anything at all can be affixed to (or said of ) such sentences as “This statement is not provable” (or even “This statement”). More specifically, if these statements are semantically (as well as scientifically, empirically, and even metaphysically) empty, then perhaps we really don’t need to worry about even the possibility of Gödel’s faulty circularity.

Of course, logicians can — and do — use weirder statements such as “Bricks have a sense of humour” or “The number 2 is blue” logically. That is, they can assign a truth value to such statements, and then treat them as pure syntactic strings (from which they can derive further statements and conclusions). Similarly, we can programme the words “The number 2 is blue” into a computer, and then that computer can grind out further statements (i.e., if it’s programmed in the right way).

To repeat. Wittgenstein didn’t argue that such cases of self-reference were bogus, or even that they have no value. Instead, he simply saw them as being part of particular (technical) language games. And from that, many things followed.

The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found

Alan Turing

Wittgenstein’s position can be summed up by saying that the Liar Paradox (or the Liar Language Game) doesn’t display (or uncover) a contradiction or paradox — it actually creates one.

So Wittgenstein was stressing the artificiality of the Liar paradox.

However, that artificiality doesn’t automatically mean that the Liar Paradox has nothing to offer us. In other words, the word “artificiality” needn’t be used negatively. It may simply a reference to something which is artificial…

As it is, though, Wittgenstein did mean it in a (fairly) negative way. After all, he did say that the Liar Paradox “is just a useless language-game”.

Alan Turing, on the other hand, seemed to be interested in the Liar Paradox for purely logical and intellectual reasons. He replied to Wittgenstein in the following manner:

“What puzzles one is that one usually uses a contradiction as a criterion for having done something wrong. But in this case one cannot find anything done wrong.”

To repeat. Wittgenstein wasn’t denying that there is a contradiction here. Instead, he was simply asking questions — and making points — about the Liar and other paradoxes.

In basic terms, then, Turing was arguing that, unlike many other cases of contradiction, the Lair Paradox doesn’t simply uncover a contradiction: it makes it the case that x and not-x must both be accepted. That is, when the (Cretan) liar utters “I am lying”, and it leads to it being interpreted as making him both a liar and not a liar (i.e., at one and the same time), then “in this case one cannot find anything done wrong”.

One can almost guess Wittgenstein’s reply to Turing. He said:

“Yes — and more: nothing has been done wrong [].”

So when it comes to the Liar Paradox, “one cannot find anything done wrong”!

In other words, nothing has been done wrong in that particular language game. However, outside that particular language game, much has been done wrong. Or, at the very least, much of this language game is semantically — and otherwise — very weird.

Finally. Wittgenstein’s argument is that the Liar Paradox does indeed lead to a bizarre conclusion. However, that’s because — in a strong sense — it was designed to do so. In other words, the Paradox is part of a language game which was specifically created to bring about a contradiction. What’s more, because it’s a self-enclosed and artificial language game, Wittgenstein ended by asking the following question:

Where will the harm come from allowing such a contradiction or paradox?

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Notes

(1) These consequences — if not always applications — of the Liar and other paradoxes usually include stuff about consciousness, God, human intuition, the universe, human uniqueness, religion, arguments against artificial intelligence, meaning, purpose, etc.

(2) Of course, everyday language does allow other kinds of self-reference which don’t generate contradictions or paradoxes, such as merely referring to oneself when one says “I am happy”.

Physics and the Philosophy of Intrinsic Properties

 

(i) Introduction

(ii) David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties

(iii) Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature

(iv) Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties?

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“An intrinsic property, as David Lewis puts it, is a property ‘which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are’, as opposed to an extrinsic property, which things have ‘in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’.”

— Ted Sider (see source here).

“An extrinsic (or relational) property is a property that depends on a thing’s relationship with other things. For example, mass is an intrinsic property of any physical object, whereas weight is an extrinsic property that varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field in which the respective object is placed.”

— See source here.

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Introduction

Very few physicists use the term “intrinsic property”. What’s more, when they do so, they don’t use it in the same which in which many philosophers do. Take the following as an example:

“In science and engineering, intrinsic and extrinsic properties are two classifications of matter or objects. An intrinsic property is inherent or innate to the sample, while an extrinsic property is not inherent to the sample.

“An intrinsic property remains the same regardless of the conditions under which it is measured. Its value depends on chemical composition and structure. The value of an extrinsic property may change, depending on conditions. It depends on the way external factors affect the sample.”

According to philosophers, intrinsic properties underlie “chemical composition and structure”: chemical composition itself can never be deemed to be intrinsic. In addition, structure is the abstract result of the chemical and physical reality of what is studied.

In other words, chemical composition itself must have an intrinsic nature, rather than it being intrinsic nature itself.

So we now need to know what it is for intrinsic properties to underlie chemical composition.

Does the chemical or physical composition of any given x simply emerge from that which is intrinsic?

Of course, these difference alone don’t provide us with a good reason to dismiss the existence of intrinsic properties (i.e., in the philosophical sense of that term). And that’s primarily because various philosophers have provided arguments as to why there must be intrinsic properties, and therefore intrinsic nature.

David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties

It may be the case that Philip Goff’s position on intrinsic nature (which will be discussed in a moment) is inspired by the work of the American philosopher David Lewis (1941–2001).

Firstly, let’s take Lewis’s own definition of intrinsic properties:

“A thing has its intrinsic properties in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is.”

[This is the exact opposite of relationalism.]

Lewis’s wording above is almost identical to some passages written by Philip Goff, which will be quoted later, and which can also be found elsewhere.

So could there ever be such a state as “the way that a thing itself is” regardless of everything else? That is, regardless of a thing’s relations to other properties, objects, events, conditions, etc., its place in time and space, and so on?

Lewis’s position can be taken to its most extreme (or, perhaps, ridiculous) in the following statement:

Object (or thing) O would still have intrinsic property P even if the entire world around it disappeared.

Perhaps there’s a midway position in which it can be argued that there are indeed intrinsic properties: However, they still have vital (even essential) relations to extrinsic properties. In other words, extrinsic proprieties may determine — to some extent at least — intrinsic properties.

All that said, it may now be countered that because objects are such-and-such-a-way, then they can only be affected (or determined) in particular ways precisely because they have the intrinsic properties which they do have. That may mean that there may be some kind of mutual relation between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.

Yet there may still be no “way” an object is regardless of its relations to other things (i.e., it relation to extrinsic properties).

To be clear on one distinction.

Some metaphysicians highlight the difference which can be made between the following:

(1) Properties which objects have independently of any external factors acting upon them (i.e., intrinsic properties).

(2) Properties which are deemed to be the way they are regardless of what’s external to them (i.e., essential properties).

If the distinctions above are applied to Philip Goff’s later example, then the intrinsic nature of mass would be what it is independently of any external factors acting upon it. Similarly, an object (or its intrinsic property) will be what it is regardless of what’s external to it.

Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature

It may well be the case that “physics doesn’t fully describe reality”.

Yet it doesn’t help here that we’re talking about what are called “intrinsic properties”. That’s because it’s not clear how that word — “properties” — is meant to be read or interpreted. (Forget about the word “intrinsic” for a moment.)

In other words, all this will depend on what intrinsic properties are supposed to be. And it may be the case that whatever such philosophers take these properties to be, they can never be described by physics. Indeed, that may be (rhetorically put) the main point of such properties.

Take the case of the English philosopher Philip Goff.

Philip Goff doesn’t simply stress the fact that physics only concerns itself with doings and relations. He also tells us what’s missing from this picture: intrinsic nature. Indeed, Goff goes one step beyond that by telling us exactly what intrinsic nature is! He does so in the following passage:

“What then is the intrinsic nature of matter? Panpsychism offers an answer: consciousness. Physics describes matter ‘from the outside’, that is to say, physics gives us rich information about the behaviour brought about by mass, spin, charge, etc. But there must be more to what something is than what it does; and according to panpsychism, mass, spin, charge, etc, are, in their intrinsic nature, forms of consciousness.”

Even if there is such a thing as “the intrinsic nature of matter”, etc., why must it be consciousness? Why not something else? Why not noumena, pixie dust, God’s thinking, etc? Indeed, since Goff tells us that intrinsic nature is beyond physics, then it’s hard to establish if we could ever (conclusively) find the right candidate for such a role. How could we ever know that we’d done so?

Thus, panpsychism isn’t going to be discussed in this piece.

That’s primarily because there are different properties that are — and can be — taken to be intrinsic by other philosophers.

In any case, whatever philosophers take intrinsic properties to be, those properties will be beyond physics — as already stated. So, again, one could (rhetorically) say that they’re designed to be beyond physics…

In other words, Goff’s intrinsic properties are designed to be (quite literally) metaphysical.

Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties?

“An essential property is a property that an individual has to have if it exists at all; it is a property that it has at every instant it exists, and in every possible world in which it exists.”

— — See source here.

When discussing the properties and events of physics, the English philosopher Bertrand Russell took a relationalist position. In other words, he seemed to reject what’s now called “intrinsic properties”. (It may be argued, however, that intrinsic properties underlie the “relational world”, without them thereby being relational themselves.)

We also have a connection set up between what is intrinsic and what is essential. So although what is intrinsic is that “which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are”, such properties may also be essential. That is, an intrinsic property may also be essential. Indeed, surely it must be essential.

In any case, Bertrand Russell once asked the following question:

“What do we mean by ‘piece of matter’?”

He answered his own question by telling us that

“[w]e do not mean something that preserves a simple identity throughout its history”.

Now that statement is partly correct and partly incorrect. It also seems to be a remark against essentialism, not against intrinsicalism.

It’s true that any particular thing (or even Russell’s “piece of matter”) won’t have (or instantiate) precisely the same properties over any given period of time. (That statement may not be true of particles and other fundamental entities.) So object O at time t¹ will be different in some — or in many — ways to O taken at t². In everyday terms, there are things about Paul Murphy which are true in June 2024; though which won’t be true of Paul Murphy in August 2024. And, of course, the same can be said of any given oak tree or a crab.

In other words, an object (or entity) needn’t ( as Russell put it) “exist complete at every moment”. So it depends on what Russell meant by the word “complete”. If it means that everything that “belongs” to object O at time t¹, will not do so at t², then that’s correct. However, an entity doesn’t need to be the sum of literally all its properties at every single point and place in time of its entire existence. (This was Leibniz’s position. See Robert Stalnaker!) It’s only the case that certain (essential?) properties are passed on from t¹ to t² to tⁿ…

Of course, if there aren’t any essential or intrinsic properties in the first place, then this scenario can’t work, and we must take Russell literally.

So it doesn’t follow that because any object (or thing) x doesn’t remain identically the same in all respects over time that it doesn’t remain the same in at least some respects.

In metaphysical terms, we call those unchanging aspects essential properties. So although the terms “essential” and “intrinsic” are related, it’s surely the case that both essential and intrinsic properties must “exist complete at every moment” when it comes to a particular entity.

However, we may not like such a reference to “essential” properties, and want to to use the words “important” or “enduring” instead (see Quine 1960).

Thus, I’ll loose millions of neurons over time, just as an oak tree will loose many of its leaves. Nonetheless, both persons and trees do have important characteristics — functional, formal and physical — which last over time. Indeed, if that weren’t the case, then we wouldn’t have any (philosophical) right to keep on referring to a particular thing (or even a particular person) with the same name over time.

Russell himself did believe (he was explicit about this) that we have no right to use the same name over time because he rejected intrinsic properties. Either that or he didn’t deem the enduring and/or important properties of an x to also be intrinsic properties.

The upshot of Russell’s position (if only in 1927) is that there are no intrinsic properties and, consequently, there aren’t really any things (or objects). In other words, all x’s properties are extrinsic. (Semantically, surely if there are no intrinsic properties, then there are no extrinsic properties either.)

Russell’s (partly Kantian) bottom line is that we have no access — either observationally or otherwise — to the intrinsic characteristics of such things. Instead, “[w]hat we know about them” is simply “their structure and their mathematical laws”. In other words, all we’ve got is mathematical structure…

This basically means that it’s “mathematical structure all the way down” — at least in the case of quantum mechanics, and, perhaps, physics generally.

Finally, did all this mean that Russell outrightly rejected the existence of intrinsic properties? Or did he argue that although all “we know about” objects (such as electrons) are their relational or extrinsic properties, it’s still the case that intrinsic properties must exist?

Did Daniel Dennett Believe that Qualia Are Real?

According to Owen Flanagan, Daniel Dennett happily accepted that there is a way things seem to us. However, is that the same thing as accepting the philosophical notion of qualia?

Despite the general view, the philosopher Daniel Dennett believed (or accepted) that “qualia are for real”… at least according to the American philosopher Owen Flanagan.

Flanagan wrote the following:

“Qualia are for real. Dennett himself says what they are before he starts quining. Sanely, he writes, ‘‘Qualia’ is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways thing seem to us’ [].”

Saying “what [x’s] are” isn’t the same as believing that x’s are “for real”. I can, after all, say what goblins are, without also believing that they are real.

Yet, okay, there are ways things (i.e., certain conscious mental states) seem to us…

But where do we go from there?

More relevantly, is accepting that there is a way things seem to us the same as accepting the philosophical notion of qualia?

Dennett might well have (initially) accepted qualia. (“Dennett himself says what they are before he starts quining.”) However, he certainly didn’t accept what he took to be the main philosophical account of them to be. [“Seemings [which are] atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.” See here.] In other words, such qualia (at least in Dennett’s view) are mere “quicksilver”. (Quicksilver? Things with very little scientific or philosophical point?)

So can we untangle the way things seem to us from qualia?

Flanagan (again) put Dennett’s position on qualia in the following way:

“To think this, Dennett must think that the identification of qualia with the ‘way things seem to us’ must be interpreted as meaning that a quale is a state such that, necessarily, being in it seems a certain way and, necessarily, there is nothing else to it.”

On this account of Dennett, if quale x “seems a certain way”, then it seems a certain way…

There is nothing else to it.

So perhaps Dennett’s account of qualia (if via Flanagan) raises certain questions.

If Dennett’s account of qualia weren’t broadly accurate (i.e., that they are “atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable”), then qualia wouldn’t do all the work their supposed to do for anti-physicalists and many others. In other words, such people actually require Dennett’s account of qualia to be accepted. And that’s because without it their own qualia-based case against physicalism simply wouldn’t work. [Note: some physicalists accept the existence of qualia. See here.]

So it’s not just the case that Dennett wanted to portray qualia in this (extreme) particular way: it seems that qualia enthusiasts do so too. That’s because (again) if qualia aren’t taken to be as Dennett believes they’re taken to be (i.e., by qualiaphiles), then what would be the (philosophical) point of them?

More broadly, much qualia-talk is designed to end up with Flanagan’s final statement — “there is nothing else to it”. That nothing else to it is used to guarantee qualia complete freedom and autonomy from any physical, functionalist and/or scientific account (or description) of them.

As it is, Flanagan isn’t entirely happy with Dennett’s account.

Flanagan Explains His Own Position

Owen Flanagan wrote:

“[] I claim that the concept simply doesn’t need to be understood that way. The alternative interpretation is that a quale is a state such that being in it seems a certain way. This interpretation is better because it allows us the concept of the way things seem without making seemings atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.”

This is a hard passage to grasp.

On first reading, Flanagan seemed to be simply repeating Dennett’s own account of qualia — if with slightly different wording.

Thus, in one passage Flanagan says that Dennett identifies qualia “with the ‘way things seem to us’”. On Flanagan’s own account, on the other hand, a quale is “a state such that being in it seems a certain way”.

So is there a substantive difference between the way x seems to us, and quale x is a state such that being in it seems a certain way?

That question just asked, I believe that Flanagan’s point is the following:

For qualiaphiles, qualia seeming a certain way is (literally) the end of the story…

To Flanagan, on the other hand, being in state x, as well as quale x seeming a certain way to us, isn’t the end of the story.

On this reading, then, we have an explanation as to why Flanagan concluded with the following words:

“This interpretation is better because it allows us the concept of the way things seem without making seemings atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on.”

Thus, Flanagan’s interpretation is better (to Flanagan at least) because even though there are indeed brute seemings — that’s not the end of the story…

Yet surely that wasn’t the end of the story for Dennett either!

So perhaps Flanagan’s point is that we can accept that there is a way things seem, yet not also take these seemings to be (Flanagan quotes Dennett’s terms) “atomic, intrinsic, exhaustive, ineffable, and so on”.

Flanagan’s conclusion (if I have it right) can be summed up in this way:

(i) Because Dennett believes that qualia are construed as being “atomic”, “intrinsic”, “exhaustive” and “ineffable”,

(ii) then to qualiaphiles, that must be the end of the story.

Does this mean that Dennett is taking the qualiaphiles and anti-physicalists at their word?

Flanagan, on the other hand, isn’t taken them at their word.

Instead, Flanagan’s “alternative interpretation” is that “a quale is a state such that being in it seems a certain way”. Yet that isn’t the end of the the story for Flanagan. Indeed, Flanagan supplies lots of very persuasive and interesting philosophical and scientific detail as to why seemings aren’t — or even can’t be — the end of the story.

A Deflationary View of Information in Physics

This essay tackles the notion of information as it’s used by physicists.

The science writer Philip Ball stresses the importance of what he and others call information. Ball allows the physicist Christopher Fuchs to express his own informationalist view when he writes:

“[Christopher Fuchs’] approach argues that quantum states themselves — the entangled state of two photons, say, or even just the spin state of a single photon — don’t exist as objective realities. Rather, ‘quantum states represent observers’ personal information, expectations and degrees of belief’, he says.”

According to this position, a photon isn’t in both spin up and spin down at one and the same time. Instead, we simply have the “information” that it can be either in spin-state up or spin-state down. In other words, until a measurement is made, we simply don’t know which state it’s in.

One may wonder, then, what point a realist notion of a spin state would serve — since (realist) physicists could never know if they were right about what they say. In other words, what’s the point of stating the following?-

Well, this photon is either in spin-state up or spin-state down, regardless of what we know — or our “information”.

Is it? How could this (or any) physicist know that?

Philip Ball

Since we are discussing the state of a photon, let’s trace all this back to John Wheeler.

John Wheeler on Information

The American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) once wrote the following words:

“An example of the idea of it from bit: when a photon is absorbed, and thereby ‘measured’ — until its absorption, it had no true reality — an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world, and, at the same time, that bit of information determines the structure of one small part of the world. It creates the reality of the time and place of that photon’s interaction.”

Wheeler seemed to be arguing that a photon literally gains its “reality” when it’s “absorbed”. Thus, if a particular photon gained its reality only when (or after) it was absorbed, then it mustn’t have had any reality before that absorption…

So can we now conclude that there simply was no photon before the absorption!

Basically, then, Wheeler stressed that the absorption can be seen in informational terms. That is, when the photon was absorbed, then “an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world”. In other words, only when the photon was absorbed could “we” (i.e., experimental physicists) gain information about it. Before that, the photon had zero reality because such physicists had zero information about it.

In more general terms.

Wheeler believed that everything we discover (at least in science or, perhaps, only physics) is about bits of information. Indeed, Wheeler believed that an object (or what he called an “information-theoretic entity”) is derived from (our?) information. Technically, this is a transformation which Wheeler called “it from bit”.

Thus, we don’t have an “it” (i.e., a physical object) until we firstly have a “bit” (a unit of information).

What Is, and What We Know

Philip Ball also quotes the physicist and philosopher of physics Jeffrey Bub as essentially putting a similar point about information, and quotes him saying:

“[]‘[F]undamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles’ [].”

This means that there’s an important distinction to be made here between what is (i.e., regardless of minds, observations, tests, experiments, etc.), and the information we have about what is.

Fuchs (at least as presented by Ball) also makes it explicit that this stress on information is on a par with philosophical anti-realism when he argues that it isn’t an ontic position. (Neither Fuchs nor Ball ever mention the philosophical position of anti-realism.) It is, instead, an epistemic (i.e., a knowledge-based or information-based) position. In Ball’s words:

“Fuchs sees these insights as a necessary corrective to the way quantum information theory has tended to propagate the notion that information is something objective and real — which is to say, ontic. ‘It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs’, he says. ‘You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.’ In contrast, he argues, what else can information possibly be except an expression of what we think we know?”

This means that stuff (in a manner of speaking) gives off information, rather than stuff being information in and of itself. In other words, information as seen in the latter way almost seems like a misuse of the word “information”.

[See ‘Quantum Bayesianism’.]

Yet Fuchs’ position conflicts with what other philosophers and physicists see as information.

Such people believe (as Fuchs himself says) that information is in no way mind-dependent. It is “ontic”. [See note.] In other words, they believe that information is information regardless of persons, minds, observers/observations, tests, and experiments.

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Note:

I’m not really sure about Philip Ball’s use of the word “ontic”, which I find difficult to decipher. That said, perhaps this position best squares with object-oriented ontology:

“Object-oriented ontology holds that objects are independent not only of other objects but also from the qualities they animate at any specific spatiotemporal location. Accordingly, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects in theory or practice, meaning that the reality of objects is always ready-to-hand.”