ABSTRACT
Materialism regards information as the ways matter can be structured. If it is structured in one way to the exclusion of others, then it conveys information. By itself, the ability of matter to convey information seems unproblematic: information can be embedded in matter and the existence of matter is compatible with information. But the big question for materialism is whether matter can, with no residual or remainder, provide an adequate account of information. And an even more daring question is whether matter itself might be a form of information. The last two generations have seen information slipping free from the grip of matter. Cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener, for instance, thought that information could not be subsumed under matter: “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.”1
