Fleeting thoughts: Fundamental time and information

Prehistory: Time as a fundamental category relating metaphysics and epistemology had been rather neglected in European philosophy following Plato’s tradition until Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Hegel referred metaphysics to history and history of philosophy, Husserl reached the phenomenon of time as the phenomenon of phenomenon after “bracketing” reality in pure consciousness, and Heidegger introduced time as a fundamental philosophical essence such as being. The philosophical research of time has thrived since the 20th century.

Thus time turns out to be that root of reality transcending and generating it.

The problem: That fundamental and philosophical understanding of time questions about its units as the units of being after the phenomenological “bracketing” of reality or fundamental ontology. Those units should be the “atoms of transformation” from uncertain future to the well-determined past by the meditation of choice in the present. Thus the units should contain the three phases of time, future, present, and past, together in a whole.

The thesis: (1) the searched units of time have the same formal structure as the units of information: bits; (2) this allows of considering information, even as the quantity of choices, in a fundamental and philosophical sense similar to that of the time itself; (3) furthermore, that fundamental and philosophical information can be seen as the universal quantity shared by all; (4) it addresses the concept of number as another philosophical element in the same fundamental meaning as being and time.

Arguments:

(1) A bit can be defined as the elementary choice between two equally probable alternatives. Thus it includes three phases: (a) before choice; (b) the choice itself; (c) after the choice. Those three phases of a unit of information corresponds to future, present, and past. The state before choice is as uncertain as future. The state after the choice is as well-determined as the past. The choice itself meditates and reconciles the state before choice and that after the choice just as the present does the same to future and past.

(2) One can equate time and information as sharing a common unit. The essence of that unit is to be invariant to the uncertain, well-ordered, and choice just as to the future, past, and present. The common unit allows of different options for interpretation of their relation: identity, independence, both partial independence and partial dependence. The choice between time and information repeats the same fundamental structure of the unit of time-information, that of a bit.

(3) Information can be seen as the quantity of choices, and thus shared by all in time, i.e. by all being. Therefor information is both universal quantity and quantitative dimension of being.

(4) Introducing a universal quantity such as information addresses the concept of number in the general and philosophical sense of universal quantity as an initial philosophical element similar to those of being and time. Number is the homogeneity of being as a whole. The independent dimension of time is just what shatters being in smaller units and different qualities.