While some information is clearly meaningful and some clearly is not, no one has been able to identify exactly what the difference is. The major obstacle has been the way information and meaning are conceptualized: the one in the physical realm of tangible, objective entities and the other in the mental world of intangible, subjective ones. This paper introduces an approach that incorporates both of them within a unified framework by defining them in terms of what they do, rather than what they are. Meaningful information is thus conceptualized here as patterns of matter and energy that have a tangible effect on the entities that detect them, either by changing their function, structure or behavior, while patterns of matter and energy that have no such effects are considered meaningless. The way that meaningful information can act as a causal agent in bio-behavioral systems enables us to move beyond dualistic concepts of ourselves as comprised of a material body that obeys the laws of physics and a non-material essence that is too elusive to study [1].

Biological detection and response units have coevolved, since detecting information offers no adaptive advantage on its own. Fixed responses to information in a given species are usually referred to as instincts because they involve "hard-wired" neuronal pathways that have developed through natural selection. Learned and remembered information modify the neuronal circuits of more developed species, so that their responses to specific information patterns become varied. Meaning is an attribute supplied by the perceiver, not an inherent property of perceived objects or events. It is a function of the response they generate, and can be inferred on this basis. Enhanced ways of detecting and responding to information are the primary ways living entities achieve adaptive superiority, either at the species or the individual level.

Information and energy are the two fundamental agents of change in the natural world, although there are critical differences in how they operate. The energy involved in physical causation is supplied by the originating entity, while the energy involved in informational causation is supplied by the receiving one. The response to information is also determined primarily by the recipient, not the information that generates it-since the latter is just an on/off signal in most biologic systems. This is why physical explanations have not been as helpful in understanding biological and behavioral phenomena as they have been in understanding physical and chemical ones. Biological systems are exquisitely self-regulating and make extensive use of error-correcting feedback information to maintain their internal environment within certain limits, as well as to regulate their interactions with the external one. The inability of materialistic explanations to account for goal-directed behavior and historical forms of causation has been a major obstacle to understanding the mind as a part of the natural world.

All living cells and organisms are equipped with specialized receptors that enable them to detect and respond to the form and arrangement of certain types of matter and energy. Each species and cell type has evolved a distinctive set of such receptors that enable it to function successfully within its particular ecological niche. Chemical receptors, like those involved in smell and taste, respond to the molecular patterns of certain substances and are present in virtually every cell and organism in the universe. Physical receptors, like those involved in vision, hearing, and touch, are activated by energy rather than directly by form. Sensory receptors are able to detect and respond to discrete objects, as well as detect the difference between current patterns of sensory input and internal reference ones. Sensation refers to the detection of energy or matter by sensory receptors, perception to the detection of meaningful information in these sensations.

Perception involves sorting out signal patterns that are meaningful from ones that are not, deciphering the information they contain, and then initiating an appropriate response. Chemical information detectors respond directly to form, while the other modalities depend on the pattern of the receptors that detected objects and events activate. Chemical information detection is involved in genetic and cellular regulation, taste and smell sensations, and hormone and pheromone signals. The other sensory modalities respond to various stimuli, like electromagnetic radiation (vision) and air pressure waves (hearing). The different receptors detect different types of meaningful information and respond by transmitting neuronal signals to the brain where it can be interpreted.

This chapter provides an overview of what lies ahead. It describes how the special uses of the term "information" since the development of Cybernetics and Information Theory have resulted in confusion about its meaning, so that most people are not clear about just what it is that brains and computers process. Meaningful Information is defined as a detectable pattern of matter or energy that generates a response in a recipient. The response may be either a behavioral one, like fight or flight, a physiological one, like salivating or sweating, or a structural one, like reconfiguring the neural connections involved in learning and memory. Meaningful information plays a central role in biological systems, from genes to cells and microorganisms, to multicellular plants and animals.

"Meaningful Information" is defined as a pattern of organized matter or energy that is detected by an animate or manufactured receptor and thereby triggers a change in the behavior, functioning, or organizational structure of the detecting entity-which may either be a macromolecule, a cell, an organism, a plant, an animal, or a fabricated device. A great deal of what is currently called "information" does not fit this definition, since it does not change or affect the recipients. The ability to detect and respond to meaningful information is essentially a biological phenomenon, since there are no inanimate information detectors in nature. Information and energy are both fundamental properties of organized matter that reflect the complexity of its organization, but while energy is a function of an entity's mass or substance, information is a function of its form (i.e., of the way its structure is organized and arranged in space or time).

One of the most remarkable things the brain does is transform the raw data of experience into the informational structures that provide a sense of meaning and understanding to our lives. Knowledge is comprised of organized sets of meaningful information that are encoded in the central nervous system, some based on personal experience and some on what others have passed on to us. Understanding is a special form of knowledge that involves appreciating how interacting entities affect each other. Rule-based reasoning involves the sequential processing of discrete bits of information according to strict algorithmic rules, while pattern-based reasoning involves searching for correspondences and contrasts between perceived patterns and reference ones. We organize and rearrange information to build models that reflect our understanding of how individual facts and inferences are linked and interact. We have no way of being certain that the knowledge we accrue is correct, however, since our information-processing systems are not good truth-detectors.

Feelings convey meaningful information about the state of our internal milieu and our relationship with the external world. Feelings are subjective qualities we attribute to the objects and events we perceive, since there is nothing inherently good or bad (or right or wrong, ugly or beautiful, etc.) about the patterns of energy and matter we detect. The various types of feelings we experience include qualia, somatic sensations, mental state appraisals, moral sentiments, esthetic feelings, and emotions. Emotions convey qualitative types of evaluative information about the world around us, which helps us navigate our way through it. All living creatures have a built-in imperative to behave in ways that maximize pleasant feeling states and minimize unpleasant ones in order to promote their own and their species' survival.

One of the great marvels of evolution is how finely matched every species is to the ecosystem in which it lives, for natural selection weeds out the genes of its less well-adapted members. Homo sapiens is an anomaly in this grand scheme of things, since we are prone to a wide range of maladaptive behaviors that diminish our well-being and survival, including consuming addictive substances, behaving irresponsibly, and ingesting more calories than we need. Although evolution has provided us with a brain that is able to use the information it detects to build models of how the world works, there is no mechanism for assuring that the information is correct or that the models are accurate. Most of our maladaptive behaviors are due to defects in the way we create symbolic representations, interpret meaning, and set goals for ourselves, since these processes are all subject to error.

Cognition consists of the mental processes that mediate between the detection of meaningful information and the response it generates. It includes a range of information-processing activities, including thinking, reasoning, and decision-making. One of the things that is usually left out of cognitive models of information processing is, however, a clear definition of what exactly is being processed. Analog processing involves looking for similarities and differences (i.e., analogies) between various information sets, while digital processing involves the manipulation of symbols according to predetermined rules. Vision and hearing process both digital and analog information, while taste, smell, touch, and kinesthesia depend on analog information. Symbols are discrete patterns of energy or matter that uniquely represent some other entity, convey the same information and meaning it does, and generate the same response. No one knows how the brain creates the symbols it uses to portray concrete objects or represent their properties and relationships.

Given the vast array of fabricated devices that perform information-related tasks in our culture, it is no wonder that the biological aspects of information often get overlooked. Virtually all of the fabricated devices that have ever been invented represent ways of extending our biological abilities for detecting, processing, or responding to meaningful information. But they are unable to do any of this on their own, apart from some form of human intervention. They are also unable to process emotional information, so they have no appreciation of what they are doing or why they are doing it. Information Theory is not really a theory about information, at least not the meaningful kind that helps regulate living entities. It deals with the capacity of a system to transmit information, rather than the meaning of the information being transmitted, which is why attempts to apply it in biology have not been particularly fruitful.

Information is represented in the brain as patterns of synaptic connections within and between arrays of linked neurons, and this determines how we interpret, remember, and respond to what we encounter. Memory and learning are indistinguishable at the neuronal level, since both involve similar changes in the synaptic connections that link nerve cells together as a result of experience. Recognition is the sense of familiarity elicited when a current experience activates the memory of a previous one; recall is the re-experiencing of previously perceived objects or events. Recalled memories are reconstructed, however, not just re-elicited. Although meaningless sensory stimuli can be experienced consciously and temporarily retained in working memory, only meaningful information gets stored in long-term memory.

One of the major impediments to understanding the concept of information is that the term is used to describe a number of disparate things, including a property of organized matter and messages sent from a sender to a receiver. Information is essentially an attribute of the form that matter and energy take, not of matter and energy themselves. Intrinsic information is a theoretical measure of the degree to which an entity is organized, the opposite of entropy. Meaningful information, however, involves the detection of a pattern of organized matter or energy by an animate or a man-made receptor, which triggers a change in the behavior, function, or organizational structure of the receiving entity. The ability to detect and respond to meaningful information is one of the defining characteristics of living entities; the process that enables cells and organisms to receive their genetic heritage, regulate their internal milieu, and respond to changes in their environment. Although energy and information are the two fundamental causal agents in the natural world, they bring about change through completely different mechanisms. The energy involved in physical interactions is supplied by the originating entity, while the energy involved in informational interactions is provided by the recipient. There is no predictable relationship between the nature of the informational stimulus and the response it engenders, for this is primarily determined by the pattern of connections between the involved receptors and effectors that evolution and learning have fashioned. As a result, a living entity’s response to information cannot be predicted on a purely mechanical basis. The laws that describe the physical interaction of organized matter apply to the transfer of energy, not to the transfer of information. This is why biology cannot be reduced to physics.