It makes a big difference whether an observed pattern is genuinely lawful or merely an emergent contingency. You can't just go around calling patterns or trends

It makes a big difference whether an observed pattern is genuinely lawful or merely an emergent contingency. You can't just go around calling patterns or trends "laws" for free. Otherwise, there is a "law" that I drink coffee every morning. If the law of accelerating returns really is a law, then WHAT exactly is behaving in a lawlike way? Physical matter? Information? But – and this is McGinn's point – does the notion of INFORMATION behaving in a lawlike way even make sense? Information is just physical phenomena (words on a page, electric charges) interpreted (by someone) AS conveying or containing information. To say that information behaves in a lawlike way is like saying that drawings of cats behave in lawlike ways. Absurdly confused.