The Emergence of Self

ion may, however, provide a clue to this form of causal influence. This problem of “abstraction” is deeply rooted in some of the most basic assumptions of Enlightenment metaphysics. In their haste to reject Platonic forms, and to embrace a nominalistic materialism, where general principles and formal properties are only causally relevant when materially embodied in some specific substrate, enlightenment thinkers inadvertently eliminated the possibility of conceiving of a bridge across this ontological gulf. This goes to the heart of the problem in a number of respects. Not only is self unable to be identified with any distinct physical material or energy, neither is the content of the thoughts or experiences of that self. How can what is not present influence what is? In answer to this quite general criticism, we take a page from information theory. Information, as Claude Shannon6 defined it in a classic 1949 monograph on the topic, is not something present; not a signal or sign or magnetic orientation of an iron fragment on a computer storage medium. Information is something removed: uncertainty. He demonstrated that information is measured in terms of how some medium used to convey it is constrained from exhibiting states that it could have been in. For example, when in 1775 Paul Revere saw two lanterns shining in the old North Church in Boston instead of one, the uncertainty about British troop movements was eliminated. The 50/50 uncertainty of the day before was reduced by this either/or signal. No choice, no information. In this way information is a relationship to what is not exhibited. When a search party fans out into the woods to locate a lost child, the people who find nothing are contributing as much as the one discovering the child. Constraint refers to options, or degrees of freedom not realized— something not immediately present and not physically intrinsic. But even so, a constraint is something quite precise. 6 Shannon, C., and Weaver, W. (1949).