Abstract
Since Wheeler’s ‘it from bit’-proposal, informational ontologies have been considered a promising candidate for the description of the fundamental nature of the world. However, few concrete examples seem to be in wide discussion. I introduce a very general model ontology, based on the notion of information states in an information space, whose dynamics are supplied by computations acting on them. I point out that such approaches lead to hard problems, the paradigm example of which is the mind-body problem: the underdetermination of the mental by the physical. However, I argue that a relational or relative-facts account of information sheds new light on this and similar problems, such as for instance the problem of deciding which computation is realized by a given physical system, and the quantum measurement problem.
Jochen Szangolies