Dear Jesse,
Welcome to the group and thank you for your thoughtful presentation of a view
of information. I would call this this standard physicalist view and say that
while it applies in some simple cases, it does not capture the complex process
that is represented by the word 'information'. Perhaps the following few points
will suggest some possible additions or changes:
1. The simplistic example of the beer container and the contained beer is
inapplicable and misleading. There is obviously no interaction to all intents
and purposes between the beer and the can. This is not the case with regard to
the energetic and meaningful (biotic, Logan) aspects of information.
2. The type-token distinction was 'invented' to cover simple examples of
bivalent linguistic structure. Once you apply tokens to information, you have
begged the question about its being abstract.
3. Biologists have apparently been unable to explain ' exactly' where
information is in DNA, perhaps, in my view, because the question is badly
posed: you are looking for a 'physical entity'. Suppose that what should be
involved is not a fixed entity but a process that does not have an exact
location and properties and is physical but in two senses, partly present and
partly potential?
4. With this in mind, the debate about whether what is exchanged between
non-living objects is information or not becomes otiose. As you imply at the
end of your note, one should take a pragmatic position, provided in my opinion
that any definition does not exclude properties of human information which
while primarily intuitive, are not ipso facto totally separated from knowledge.
Intuiting is also a physical process.
5. A third group of theories of information, among which I include the
semiotic, may be characterized as insufficiently physicalist. I mean by this
dependent on world-views which fail to integrate the dynamic physical
properties of information and postulate other types of 'convenient fictions' as
fundamental. Nevertheless, like all the approaches indicated, it has something
to offer, without being the 'whole story'.
As you say, the key is to have an open mind.
Best wishes,
Joe Brenner
A Student
----- Original Message -----
From: Jesse David Dinneen
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2017 10:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Can the can drink beer ? - No way!
Dear FIS colleagues,
Though this is my first post I will spare my introduction to keep the message
short. For now I'd simply like to thank everyone for the stimulating
conversations and share a few thoughts regarding the current discussion, in
which I sympathize with Krassimir, Bob, and others unconvinced that information
transfer happens between non-living objects. For me this is caused by the
following points:
(a) One can identify identical information in non-identical physical phenomena,
and non-identical information in identical physical phenomena, which suggests
that information is not identical to (and therefore shouldn't be confused with)
the physical objects that carry or afford it. I give examples and discuss this
and other problematic beliefs about information in an article published in
Library Trends 63(3), though it is written primarily for information
professionals and thus may bore some FIS readers.
(b) If information were physical, it couldn't be in two places at once,
suggesting that information transfer would cause the source to lose the sent
information. If we apply the type/token distinction we can instead say that in
a case of successful information transfer the receiver obtains a token of the
correct information type (i.e,. the same type as the source's token). Since
types are abstract, so is information. Timpson argued this about Shannon
information in his influential PhD dissertation about the nature of quantum
information, and I adapted it to non-Shannon information in a short paper that
will appear in this year's Canadian Association for Information Science
conference proceedings.
(c) In my experience, examples that seem like demonstrations of physical or
natural information can be restated or explained with sufficient physical
causes and effects and no mention of information. This and the above problems
suggest information is not truly present in such cases (if information isn't
physical, non-living objects can't exchange it) but is instead a convenient
fiction superimposed by those describing the transfer. Indeed, when I have
tasked biologists to explain where exactly the information is in DNA, it always
remained couched in figurative speech and eluded confident identification with
some physical entity.
So, while it may be counter-intuitive (as Alex and Karl noted) to state that
information transfer does not happen between non-living objects, I find it
unsound to state that it does, and appeasing intuition is a desideratum, not a
criterion, of the work of scientists and philosophers: I believe we owe more
fidelity to knowledge than to common parlance or intuition, which are
mercurial. I don't believe this means such views of information shouldn't be
adopted for use -- the productivity of information theory or DNA 'information'
is undeniable -- just that we should be careful how and how far we let our
convenient fictions extend into theorising about and characterisation of
information. But I continue to follow this topic with an open mind and look
forward to reading others' views.
Regards,
Jesse David Dinneen
McGill University
On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 1:17 PM, Moisés André Nisenbaum
<moises.nisenb...@ifrj.edu.br> wrote:
Dear Bob.
I agree 100%. We must classify information in abiotic and biotic, but, in my
opinion, both are parts of "information".
Some scientists, including Tom Stonier, tried to define information
considering the syntactic and semantic aspects of information.
Can we draw a parallel between these concepts?
Abiotic <--> syntactic <--> Shannon <--> machines
Biotic <--> semantic <--> human
Shall we abandon the insights from Shannon theory to construct a theory of
information (unified and non reductionist)?
Attached a draw to illustrate the Von Newmann - Shannon talking :-)
Um abraço
Moisés
2017-03-26 11:30 GMT-03:00 Bob Logan <lo...@physics.utoronto.ca>:
Hello Krassimir - I agree with the sentiments you expressed - they seem to
parallel my thoughts.
I am often puzzled by the use of the term ‘information’ in the way it is
often used by physicists re the info of material objects . The way the term
information is used in physics such as Wheelers its from bits does not conform
to my understanding of information as a noun describing the process of
informing. How can abiotic matter be informed as it cannot make any choices
and hence cannot be informed. Living organisms make choices and use information
to make those choices for all living creatures from bacteria to humans
including physicists :-). The only information involved in the uses by
physicists describing our universe of the word information is that associated
with physicists becoming informed of what is happening in the universe they
observe. I am happy that they want to discuss this info but I believe there is
a need to distinguish between info (biotic) and info (abiotic) as used in
physics. The use of a single word information for both categories is confusing,
at least it is for me. This ambiguity reminds me of Shannon's use of the term
entropy to define his notion of information having taken the advice of Von
Neumann. A story is told that Shannon did not know what to call his measure
and von Neumann advised him to call it entropy because nobody knows what it
means and that it would therefore give Shannon an advantage in any debate
(Campbell, Jeremy 1982, p. 32 Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language,
and Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. ). Shannon defined information in such
a way that he admitted was not necessarily about meaning. Information without
meaning has no meaning for me. Kind regards to all - Bob Logan
______________________
Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications
https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/people/homepages/logan/
On Mar 26, 2017, at 5:39 AM, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> wrote:
Dear Brian, Arturo, Karl, Alex, Lars-Goran, Gyuri, and FIS colleagues,
Thank you for your remarks!
What is important is that every theory has its own understanding of the
concepts it uses.
For “foreigners”, theirs meaning may be strange or unknown.
Some times, concepts of one theory contradict to corresponded concepts from
other theory.
For years, I have met many different definitions of concept “information”
and many more kinds of its use.
From materialistic up to weird point of view...
To clear my own understanding, I shall give you a simple example:
CAN THE CAN DRINK BEER ?
CAN THE CAN EXCHANGE BEER WITH THE GLASS ?
The can is used by humans for some goals, for instance to store some beer
for a given period.
But the can itself “could not understand” its own functions and what the
can can do with beer it contains.
All its functionality is a human’s consciousness model.
Can cannot exchange beer with the glass if there are no human activity or
activity of additional devices invented by humans to support this.
Further:
CAN THE ARTIFICIAL LEG WALK ?
You know the answer ... Human with an artificial leg can walk ...
All functionality of artificial leg is a result from human’s consciousness
modeling and invention.
In addition:
IS THE “PHYSICAL INFORMATION” INFORMATION ?
If it is, the first question is how to measure the quantity and quality of
such “information” and who can do this?
I prefer the answer “NO” – “physical information” is a concept which means
something else but not “information” as it is in my understanding.
From my point of view, “physical information” is a kind of reflection (see
“Theory of reflections” of T.Pavlov).
Every reflection may be assumed as information iff (if and only if) there
exist a subjective information expectation to be resolved by given reflection.
For physical information this low is not satisfied. Because of this, I
prefer to call this phenomenon simply “a reflection”.
And so on ...
Finally:
Human been invented too much kinds of prostheses including ones for our
intellectual functionalities, i.e. many different kinds of electronic devices
which, in particular, can generate some electrical, light, etc. impulses, which
we assume as “information”; usually a combination of impulses we assume as s
structure to be recognized by us as “information”.
A special kind of prostheses are Robots. They have some autonomous
functionalities but are still very far from living consciousness. The level of
complexity of robot’s consciousness is far of human’s one. Someone may say that
robots understand and exchange “information”, but still they only react on
incoming signals following the instructions given by humans. Theirs functioning
is similar to human ones but only similar. They may recognize some structures
of signals and exchange such ones with other robots or living creatures. Maybe
someone wants to call this “information exchange”, but, after Shannon, I call
this “sending and/or receiving signals”. And automatic reaction to signals.
One may say, the Robot (Computer) memory contains information but really
it does not contain anything – it has its own structure which can be changed
temporally of permanently by external electrical impulses.
Is the human memory the same – a structure which can be changed temporally
of permanently by external or internal signals? I think – yes, It is!
What is the difference? Why we may say that the living creatures process
information but not living couldn’t?
The answer is: because the living creatures may create and resolve the
“information expectation” with very high level of complexity.
Maybe in the future robots will can do it ...
Such robot I call “INFOS”. It will be artificial living creature. Possibly
with some biological elements.
It will be very interesting and amazing to see how the can can drink beer
:-) And very dangerous – where the beer will be kept if the can can drink it?
I hope, now it is clear why I assert that (now!) non-living objects COULD
NOT “exchange information”.
Friendly regards
Krassimir
From: Karl Javorszky
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 8:24 PM
To: Alex Hankey
Cc: Krassimir Markov ; Arturo Tozzi ; FIS Webinar
Subject: Re: [Fis] non-living objects COULD NOT “exchange information”
1) Let me second to the point Alex raises:
machines, computers, do exchange information. It would be against cultural
conventions to say that the notification that the refrigerator sends to your
phone's app "to-do-list" of the content "milk only 0.5 liter available" is not
an information.
The signals my car's pressure sensor sends to my dashboard, saying "tire
pressure front right wheel is critically low" is a clear case of information,
whether I read it or not.
2) Let me add to the point Alex states, namely that the "form of
information that I presented to FiS a year ago offers the only scientifically
based,mathematical physics form of 'information' that I have personally seen in
the scientific literature", (Alex, will you please restate in the present
context, for the present discussion, your formulation) the following:
I have given in my work "Natural orders - de ordinibus naturalibus" (ISBN
9783990571378) the following definition of the term "information":
8.3.3.3 Information is a description of what is not the case.
[Let x = ak. This is a statement, no information contained. Let x = ak and k
<symbol for is_included_in> {1,2,...,k,...,n}. This statement contains the
information k <symbol for is_not_included_in>{1,2,...,k-1,k+1,...,n}.]
(Sorry for the included & not-included symbols not making it thru the
simplified text editor in use here.)
Karl
2017-03-24 18:51 GMT+01:00 Alex Hankey <alexhan...@gmail.com>:
BUT, in common parlance, computers and mobile phones 'exchange
information' (in the abstract, digital sense) all the time. Including this
email.
If you wish to cleanly restrict yourself to semantic content, the the
form of information that I presented to FiS a year ago offers the only
scientifically based,mathematical physics form of 'information' that I have
personally seen in the scientific literature.
Best wishes,
Alex Hankey
On 24 March 2017 at 15:25, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> wrote:
Dear Arturo and FIS Colleagues,
Let me remember that:
The basic misunderstanding that non-living objects could “exchange
information” leads to many principal theoretical as well as psychological
faults.
For instance, photon could exchange only energy and/or reflections !
Sorry for this n-th my remark ...
Friendly greetings
Krassimir
From: tozziart...@libero.it
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 4:52 PM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] I: Re: Is information truly important?
Dear Lars-Göran,
I prefer to use asap my second FIS bullet, therefore it will be my
last FIS mail for the next days.
First of all, in special relativity, an observer is NOT by definition
a material object that can receive and store incoming energy from other
objects.
In special relativity, an observer is a frame of reference from which
a set of objects or events are being measured. Speaking of an observer is not
specifically hypothesizing an individual person who is experiencing events, but
rather it is a particular mathematical context which objects and events are to
be evaluated from. The effects of special relativity occur whether or not there
is a "material object that can recieve and store incoming energy from other
objects" within the inertial reference frame to witness them.
Furthermore, take a photon (traveling at speed light) that crosses a
cosmic zone close to the sun. The photon "detects" (and therefore can interact
with) a huge sun surface (because of its high speed), while we humans on the
Earth "detect" (and can interact with) a much smaller sun surface.
Therefore, the photon may exchange more information with the sun than
the humans on the Earth: both the photon and the humans interact with the same
sun, but they "detect" different surfaces, and therefore they may exchange with
the sun a different information content.
If we also take into account that the photon detects an almost
infinite, fixed time, this means once again that it can exchange much more
information with the sun than we humans can.
In sum, once again, information does not seem to be a physical
quantity, rather just a very subjective measure, depending on the speed and of
the time of the "observer".
Arturo Tozzi
AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
----Messaggio originale----
Da: "Lars-Göran Johansson" <lars-goran.johans...@filosofi.uu.se>
Data: 24/03/2017 14.50
A: "tozziart...@libero.it"<tozziart...@libero.it>
Ogg: Re: [Fis] Is information truly important?
24 mars 2017 kl. 13:15 skrev tozziart...@libero.it:
Dear Fisers,
a big doubt...
We know that the information of a 3D black hole is proportional
to its 2D horizon, according to the Bekenstein-Hawking equations.
However, an hypotetical observer traveling at light speed (who
watches a black hole at rest) detects a very large black hole horizon, due to
Einstein's equations.
Therefore, he detects more information from the black hole than
an observer at rest, who sees a smaller horizon…
An observer is by definition a material object that can recieve and
store incoming energy from other objects. Since it requires infinite energy to
accelerate even a slighest object to the velocity of light, no observer can
travel at the speed of light. That means that your thought experiment is based
in inconsistent assumptions and no vaild conclusions from them can be drawn.
Lars-Göran Johansson
In sum, information does not seem to be a physical quantity,
rather just a very subjective measure...
Arturo Tozzi
AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
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lars-goran.johans...@filosofi.uu.se
0701-679178
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Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789
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Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ
Campus Rio de Janeiro
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