As you might expect, having my own views on information/form and mind, I’m not particularly open to alternatives. There is all the difference in the world between someone who is looking for answers and someone who is trying to get their own theories accepted — or to sell them, to put it bluntly. I’m certainly in the latter category, and it looks rather like you are too, so we are natural competitors, not collaborators.

Having said that, your encouragement re the PhD is very welcome, thanks a lot, and I wish you the best of luck with your’s.

I am just about to complete a PhD in the philosophy of information at Reading U.

Essentially I defend the thesis that information is form conveyed by data. Form is what we can sense of our environment and is what is conveyed by Shannon’s data (the form conveyed by the data is all important). This form must be supported by something that has form – solid material or the data arranged to be in a particular form – or an energy field that is of a particular form. This leads to the idea that mind could be an energy field created by neural activity.

Don’t let your age dissuade you from the PhD – I was over 60 when I started the PhD and did it to get to know something about a subject I have been interested in for a long time.

All the best

Dick

David: That’s encouraging too, especially coming from one of the organisers! I’m now thinking again about submitting an abstract. Re the BBC series, I have doubts about Adam Curtis’ ideology, but given your recommendation, I will watch it. Thanks.

That’s not, by itself, a reason for not participating in the Workshop. On the contrary, it could be a reason that you should be there, in order to put forward a different perspective.

However, “the typical reaction to my ideas among academics is to see them as wildly over-ambitious and not worth taking seriously” would be disheartening, I can see.

BTW, did you watch the BBC2 series “All watched over by machines of loving grace”? If you didn’t, I recommend them on iPlayer http://bbc.in/lUDuMq

Thanks for the tip. At the moment it seems unlikely I’ll be doing anything academic during the 2011/12 session, but I’ll keep the OU in mind in the future.

Don’t forget the OU! We do part-time research degrees as well as undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. We also have a few studentships for full-time research degrees.

See http://www.open.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/

Let me know if there’s any chance you’d be interested in following it up.

David