In my pile of scientific photocopies I have Peter Godfrey-Smith, “Genes Do Not Encode Information for Phenotypic Traits,” in C. Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, (Blackwell, 2004), pp. 275-289. By “phenotypic traits,” it is understood the structure, size, shape, colour and behaviour patterns of an organism. These are taken by the likes of sociobiologists such as Richard Dawkins, to be caused by genes, in the sense that genes have a informational role in the production of the phenotype of the whole organism.
First, in terms of Shannon’s information theory, information exists where a reduction of uncertainty at one place correlates with a reduction of uncertainty at another (p. 277) In this sense, the presence of a gene g1 could be correlated with some phenotypical trait P1, but, the situation can be turned around, looking at correlations between environmental conditions and phenotypical traits, so that the phenotype could be seen as carrying information about the genes. So, this does not deliver the conclusions the genetic reductionist requires.