Let's take the road. Obviously the mass of the road itself (the object) is physical and has physical characteristics like its components, the chemical composition of its components, the elements in the chemicals, the particles and forces in the atoms of the elements, etc.
Now let's take the idea of a road. Where does that idea actually reside? In the brains of living beings, which are themselves physical.
Ideas are information, and information is physical. You need energy to create and maintain it, and it can be quantified in terms of the entropy spent to create it. It is a persistent pattern of mass/energy.
The "world of information" only seems infinite to us because we are so inefficient at working with it outside each of our own minds. Think of the incredible amount of mass and energy that must be expended to create a road, or even a book, or even an SD card. By contrast, our 8 lb. lump of brain stores and returns vast quantities of information with seemingly no effort on our part.
But of course thinking does require physical effort. An inert human, thinking in a chair, still requires food.
The problem with this line of thought is that it completely upends classical cause and effect. Things have effects in proportion to their size. The sun has a way bigger effect on us than Jupiter does.
But when you get to the scale of ideas, the logic upends. The pen should not be mightier than the sword, but is because ideas have outsized effects on the world compared to their physical size as merely electrons moving in brains.
But logic can be maintained by extending existence out to the non-physical. Ideas can be bigger than other ideas, and you can logically evaluate them. You just have to figure out the rules first.
The pen is mightier than the sword only because the pen can create ideas that inspire and guide a lot of swords.
Ideas without physical actions don't cause any effect. Ideas only outweigh actions to the extent that they result in larger actions.
If you start with any historically impactful idea and carefully trace its impact, you will see quite a lot of mass and energy moving around along the way.
And what is a sword without an idea? It lies there, inert, no threat to anyone. So when people talk about "the pen vs. the sword," what they're really talking about is a competition of ideas. Behind every sword there is thought--and pens can help change thought.
But none of this means that thought and ideas are non-physical. The relative impact of competing ideas might be non-linear and unpredictable, but physical systems can be non-linear and unpredictable.
Let's take the road. Obviously the mass of the road itself (the object) is physical and has physical characteristics like its components, the chemical composition of its components, the elements in the chemicals, the particles and forces in the atoms of the elements, etc.
Now let's take the idea of a road. Where does that idea actually reside? In the brains of living beings, which are themselves physical.
Ideas are information, and information is physical. You need energy to create and maintain it, and it can be quantified in terms of the entropy spent to create it. It is a persistent pattern of mass/energy.
The "world of information" only seems infinite to us because we are so inefficient at working with it outside each of our own minds. Think of the incredible amount of mass and energy that must be expended to create a road, or even a book, or even an SD card. By contrast, our 8 lb. lump of brain stores and returns vast quantities of information with seemingly no effort on our part.
But of course thinking does require physical effort. An inert human, thinking in a chair, still requires food.