Dear colleagues,
In the first half of this month, we have a heated discussion about the
relationship among Information, Language, and Communication started by Sung. I
am simply summing up part of the different opinions as follows:
Sung: Without a language, no communication would be possible. Encoding,
decoding, information (flow) are essential for communication.
Part of the related different opinions:
Terry: (In this way), one must use the term "language" in a highly metaphoric
sense. Communications take place in the following situations, are there
languages? Such as scent, music, sexual display of some animals, smile, frown,
pattern of colors of a flower that attracts bees, dog's bark, walk of a
depressed person, hiccup after eating. There is a serious problem with using
language as the model for analyzing other species’ communication in
hindsight.…… It is an understandable anthropocentric bias.
Javier: Not every communication process involves coding/decoding and meaning.
so they could not be simply paralleled to language. For instance, there is no
coding/decoding process when I communicate to my dog. It does not understand my
speaking, and I do not understand its barking. Yet still both of us interact. I
would not define communication as information transfer. There is no information
"traveling" from one place to another, from sender to receiver. The system
itself becomes the medium of information production and processing.
Xueshan and Stan: The hierarchy idea is not only suitable for different species
which communication take places between them, from elementary particle(?),
molecule(?) to cell, brain(human, other animals), plant(?), even other
different planets(?). It is also suitable for different information carrier.
Stan think the carriers can be layered as {language {signal {information}}},
Xueshan think they can be layered as {substrate {signal {information}}}, here
we simply consider sign, signal, symbol, token, marker and so forth as the same.
Gordana: It might be possible to develop a general theory of language …… with
different levels of cognition which communicate and process information in
order to survive. As in biology there are different kinds of organisms there
are also different kinds of “languages”. There are small languages communicated
in relatively simple ways between simple agents (like cells) and big languages
used by complex agents like humans.
(In all the above discussions, we all omitted the Sung’s deep layer analysis of
cell language and category theory).
Others:
Arturo: I suggest to fully REMOVE from the TRUE scientific adventures the
terms: "symbol", "signal", "marker", "information".
Howard: Information is anything a receiver can interpret. Information is in the
eye of the beholder.
Javier: Information and meaning are not the same.
Christophe: I take communications as related to meaning generation.
Mayank: Can we not make conceptual leap from networks, information,
communication, and language to sound?
Koichiro: Focusing upon languaging comes to shed light on the communication in
time between whatever parties.
Best wishes,
Xueshan
From: Stanley N Salthe [mailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 11:44 PM
To: y...@pku.edu.cn
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on the
cateogry theory
Xueshan -- My {language {signal {information}}} is meant apply only to a system
that has language. That is, my assertion would be that no information can be
gained in such a system that has not passed through a linguistic filter. The
idea is that in such a system language dominates everything. Perhaps this has
not been definitively demonstrated as yet. I suppose it would depend upon, for
example, whether or not we consider our bodily reaction to, for example, having
just burned our finger to have been ‘informationally mediated. If not (which
seems possible to me) then my supposition might be OK. But if we think that
neuron communications mediate information, then I am wrong.
STAN
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 6:31 AM, Xueshan Yan <y...@pku.edu.cn
<mailto:y...@pku.edu.cn> > wrote:
Dear Javier and Dear Stan,
Javier:
1. I very much agree with you as follows:
“I think that only signals can be transmitted, not information. Information can
only be gained by an observer (a self-referential system) that draws a
distinction.”
A Chinese scholar Dongsheng Miao’s argument is: There is no information can
exists without carrier, i.e. No naked can exists.
I think both of you two are expressing a principle of information science.
2. According to Linguistics, the relationship between language and
communication is:
Language is a tool of communication about information.
Of course, this is only limited to the human atmosphere. So I think that all
(Human) Semiotics ((Human) Linguistics), (Human) Communication Study should be
the subdisciplines of Human Informatics.
==========================================================
Dear Xueshan,
Thanks for sharing your interesting remarks and references. I think no one
really wants to deny the crucial role the language metaphor has played in the
thinking of communication and information models. But I believe the crucial
point is to distinguish between language and communication. Language is for us
humans the main communication medium, though not the only one. We tend to
describe other communication media in society and nature by mapping the
language-like characteristics they have. This has been useful and sucessful so
far. But pushing the language metaphor too far is showing its analytical
limits. I think we need to think of a transdisciplinary theory of communication
media. On the other hand, I agree with you that we need to check the uses of
the concepts of signal and information. I think that only signals can be
transmitted, not information. Information can only be gained by an observer (a
self-referential system) that draws a distinction.
Best,
Javier
==============================================
Stan:
According to Peirce, language is only one of the systematic signs. Here we
consider sign, signal, symbol as the same thing. So, more precisely in my
opinion:
{signal {information}}, or {substrate {signal {information}}}
But not
{language {signal {information}}}
If you remember, in our previous discussions, I much appreciate the
The hierarchy idea is very important to our study which is initially introduced
by Pedro, Nikhil and you.
===============================================================
Xueshan -- I think one can condense some of your insights hierarchically, as:
In a system having language, information seemingly may be obtained in other
ways as well. It would be a conceptually broader category. Thus (using the
compositional hierarchy):
[information [language [signal]]]
Meaning that, when a system has language, all information will be understood or
construed by way of linguistic constructs.
(Here I am using ‘signal’ as being more specific than Peirce’s ‘sign’, where:
[sign [information [...]]] )
Then, more dynamically (using the subsumptive hierarchy):
{language {signal {information}}}
Information in a languaged system is derived by way linguistic formations, so
that, even though it is an extremely broad category, information (informing)
only emerges by way of linguistically informed transformations.
STAN
Best wishes to all,
Xueshan
===============================================================
El feb 10, 2018 5:23 AM, "Xueshan Yan" <y...@pku.edu.cn
<mailto:y...@pku.edu.cn> > escribió:
Dear Colleagues,
I have read the article "The languages of bacteria" which Gordana recommended,
and has gained a lot of inspiration from it. In combination with Sung's
comparative linguistics exploration on cell language and human language, I have
the following learning feelings to share with everyone:
In this article, the author recognized that bacteria have evolved multiple
languages for communicating within and between species. Intra- and interspecies
cell-cell communication allows bacteria to coordinate various biological
activities in order to behave like multicellular organisms. Such as AI-2, it is
a general language that bacteria use for intergenera signaling.
I found an interesting phenomenon in this paper: the author use the concept
information 3 times but the concept signal (signal or signaling) 55 times, so
we have to review the history and application of “information” and “signal” in
biology and biochemistry, it is helpful for us to understand the relationship
between language, signal, and information.
The origin of the concept of signal (main the signal transduction) can be
traced back to the end of the 1970s. But until 1980, biochemist and
endocrinologist Martin Rodbell published an article titled: “The Role of
Hormone Receptors and GTP-Regulatory Proteins in Membrane Transduction" in
Nature, in this paper he used the "signal transduction" first time. Since then,
the research on signal transduction is popular in biology and biochemistry.
As for any information transmission system, if we pay more attention to its
transmission carrier instead of its transmission content, we are used to
employing "signal transmission" instead of "signal transduction". From the
tradition of the early use of information concept, the signal transduction
study of cells is only equivalent to the level of telecommunications before
1948. Outwardly, before the advent of Shannon's information theory, the central
issue of telecommunications is "signal" rather than "information". After that,
the central issue of telecommunications is "information" rather than "signal".
According to the application history of information concept, nearly all the
essential problems behind the concepts of communication, messenger, signal and
so on may be information problems. Just as the language problem what we are
discussing here, our ultimate goal is to analyze the information.
For the same reason, I recommend another two papers:
1. Do Plants Think? (June 5, 2012, Scientific American)
(
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz/#rd?sukey=fc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b>
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz/#rd?sukey=fc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b）
2. Plants Can Think, Feel and Learn (December 3, 2014, New Scientist)
(
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429980-400-root-intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn>
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429980-400-root-intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn)
>From which we can judge whether or not a plants informatics can exists.
Best wishes,
Xueshan
From: <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es
[mailto: <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On
Behalf Of Sungchul Ji
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 9:10 PM
To: Francesco Rizzo < <mailto:13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>
13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>; Terrence W. DEACON < <mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu>
dea...@berkeley.edu>
Cc: Fis, < <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on the
cateogry theory
Hi Terry, and FISers,
Can it be that "language metaphor" is akin to a (theoretical) knife that, in
the hands of a surgeon, can save lives but, in a wrong hand, can kill?
All the best.
Sung
_____
From: Francesco Rizzo < <mailto:13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>
13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 2:56:11 AM
To: Terrence W. DEACON
Cc: Fis,; Sungchul Ji
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on the
cateogry theory
Caro Terry estensibile a tutti,
è sempre un piacere leggerTi e capirTi. La general theory of information è
preceduta da un sistema (o semiotica) di significazione e seguita da un sistema
(o semiotica ) di comunicazione. Tranne che quando si ha un processo
comunicativo come il passaggio di un Segnale (che non significa necessariamente
'un segno') da una Fonte, attraverso un Trasmettitore, lungo un Canale, a un
Destinatario. In un processo tra macchina e macchina il segnale non ha alcun
potere 'significante'. In tal caso non si ha significazione anche se si può
dire che si ha passaggio di informazione. Quando il destinatario è un essere
umano (e non è necessario che la fonte sia anch'essa un essere umano) si è in
presenza di un processo di significazione. Un sistema di significazione è una
costruzione semiotica autonoma, indipendente da ogni possibile atto di
comunicazione che l'attualizzi. Invece ogni processo di comunicazione tra
esseri umani -- o tra ogni tipo di apparato o struttura 'intelligente, sia
meccanico che biologico, -- presuppone un sistema di significazione come
propria o specifica condizione. In conclusione, è possibile avere una semiotica
della significazione indipendente da una semiotica della comunicazione; ma è
impossibile stabilire una semiotica della comunicazione indipendente da una
semiotica della significazione.
Ho appreso molto da Umberto Eco a cui ho dedicato il capitolo 10. Umberto Eco e
il processo di re-interpretazione e re-incantamento della scienza economica
(pp. 175-217) di "Valore e valutazioni. La scienza dell'economia o l'economia
della scienza" (FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1997). Nello mio stesso libro si trovano:
- il capitolo 15. Semiotica economico-estimativa (pp. 327-361) che si colloca
nel quadro di una teoria globale di tutti i sistemi di significazione e i
processi di comunicazione;
- il sottoparagrafo 5.3.3 La psicologia genetica di Jean Piaget e la
neurobiologia di Humberto Maturana e Francesco Varela. una nuova epistemologia
sperimentale della qualità e dell'unicità (pp. 120-130).
Chiedo scusa a Tutti se Vi ho stancati o se ancora una volta il mio scrivere in
lingua italiana Vi crea qualche problema. Penso che il dono che mi fate è, a
proposito della QUALITA' e dell'UNICITA', molto più grande del (per)dono che
Vi chiedo. Grazie.
Un saluto affettuoso.
Francecso
2018-02-07 23:02 GMT+01:00 Terrence W. DEACON <dea...@berkeley.edu
<mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu> >:
Dear FISers,
In previous posts I have disparaged using language as the base model for
building a general theory of information.
Though I realize that this may seem almost heretical, it is not a claim that
all those who use linguistic analogies are wrong, only that it can be causally
misleading.
I came to this view decades back in my research into the neurology and
evolution of the human language capacity.
And it became an orgnizing theme in my 1997 book The Symbolic Species.
Early in the book I describe what I (and now other evolutionary biologists)
have come to refer to as a "porcupine fallacy" in evolutionary thinking.
Though I use it to critique a misleading evolutionary taxonomizing tendency, I
think it also applies to biosemiotic and information theoretic thinking as well.
So to exemplify my reasoning (with apologies for quoting myself) I append the
following excerpt from the book.
"But there is a serious problem with using language as the model for analyzing
other
species’ communication in hindsight. It leads us to treat every other form of
communication as
exceptions to a rule based on the one most exceptional and divergent case. No
analytic method
could be more perverse. Social communication has been around for as long as
animals have
interacted and reproduced sexually. Vocal communication has been around at
least as long as frogs
have croaked out their mating calls in the night air. Linguistic communication
was an afterthought,
so to speak, a very recent and very idiosyncratic deviation from an ancient and
well-established
mode of communicating. It cannot possibly provide an appropriate model against
which to assess
other forms of communication. It is the rare exception, not the rule, and a
quite anomalous
exception at that. It is a bit like categorizing birds’ wings with respect to
the extent they possess or
lack the characteristics of penguins’ wings, or like analyzing the types of
hair on different mammals
with respect to their degree of resemblance to porcupine quills. It is an
understandable
anthropocentric bias—perhaps if we were penguins or porcupines we might see
more typical wings
and hair as primitive stages compared to our own more advanced adaptations—but
it does more to
obfuscate than clarify. Language is a derived characteristic and so should be
analyzed as an
exception to a more general rule, not vice versa."
Of course there will be analogies to linguistic forms.
This is inevitable, since language emerged from and is supported by a vast
nonlinguistic semiotic infrastructure.
So of course it will inherit much from less elaborated more fundamental
precursors.
And our familiarity with language will naturally lead us to draw insight from
this more familiar realm.
I just worry that it provides an elaborate procrustean model that assumes what
it endeavors to explain.
Regards to all, Terry
On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:04 AM, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
<javierwe...@gmail.com <mailto:javierwe...@gmail.com> > wrote:
In principle I agree with Terry. I have been thinking of this, though I am
still not able to make a sound formulation of the idea. Still I am afraid that
if I miss the chance to make at least a brief formulation of it I will lose the
opportunity to make a brainstorming with you. So, here it comes:
I have been thinking that a proper way to distinguish the contexts in which the
concept of information acquires a fixed meaning or the many contexts on which
information can be somehow observed, is to make use of the distinction between
medium and form as developed by N. Luhmann, D. Baecker and E. Esposito. I have
already expressed my opinion in this group that what information is depends on
the system we are talking about. But the concept of medium is more especific
since a complex system ussualy has many sources and types of information.
So the authors just mentioned, a medium can be broadly defined as a set of
loosely coupled elements. No matter what they are. While a Form is a temporary
fixed coupling of a limited configuration of those elements. Accordingly, we
can be talking about DNA sequences which are selected by RNA to form proteins
or to codify a especific instruction to a determinate cell. We can think of
atoms forming a specific kind of matter and a specific kind of molecular
structure. We can also think of a vocabulary or a set of linguistic conventions
making possible a meaningful utterance or discourse.
The idea is that the medium conditions what can be treated as information. Or
even better, each type of medium produces information of its own kind.
According to this point of view, information cannot be transmitted. It can only
be produced and "interpreted" out of the specific difference that a medium
begets between itself and the forms that take shape from it. A medium can only
be a source of noise to other mediums. Still, media can couple among them. This
means that media can selforganize in a synergetic manner, where they depend on
each others outputs or complexity reductions. And this also mean that they do
this by translating noise into information. For instance, language is coupled
to writing, and language and writing to print. Still oral communication is
noisy to written communication. Let us say that the gestures, emotions,
entonations, that we make when talking cannot be copied as such into writing.
In a similar way, all the social practices and habits made by handwriting were
distorted by the introduction of print. From a technical point of view you can
codify the same message orally, by writing and by print. Still information and
meaning are not the same. You can tell your girlfriend you love her. That
interaction face to face where the lovers look into each others eye, where they
can see if the other is nervous, is trembling or whatever. Meaning (declaring
love and what that implies: marriage, children, and so on) and information (he
is being sincere, she can see it in his eye; he brought her to a special place,
so he planned it, and so on) take a very singular and untranslatable
configuration. If you write a letter you just can say "I love you". You shall
write a poem or a love letter. Your beloved would read it alone in her room and
she would have to imagine everything you say. And imagination makes
information and meaning to articulate quite differently as in oral
communication. It is not the same if you buy a love card in the kiosk and send
it to her. Maybe you compensate the simplicity of your message by adding some
chocolates and flowers. Again, information (jumm, lets see what he bought her)
and meaning are not the same. I use examples of social sciences because that is
my research field, although I have the intuition that it could also work for
natural sciences.
Best,
JJ
El feb 7, 2018 10:47 AM, "Sungchul Ji" <s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu
<mailto:s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu> > escribió:
Hi FISers,
On 10/8/2017, Terry wrote:
" So basically, I am advocating an effort to broaden our discussions and
recognize that the term information applies in diverse ways to many different
contexts. And because of this it is important to indicate the framing, whether
physical, formal, biological, phenomenological, linguistic, etc.
. . . . . . The classic syntax-semantics-pragmatics distinction introduced by
Charles Morris has often been cited in this respect, though it too is in my
opinion too limited to the linguistic paradigm, and may be misleading when
applied more broadly. I have suggested a parallel, less linguistic (and nested
in Stan's subsumption sense) way of making the division: i.e. into intrinsic,
referential, and normative analyses/properties of information."
I agree with Terry's concern about the often overused linguistic metaphor in
defining "information". Although the linguistic metaphor has its limitations
(as all metaphors do), it nevertheless offers a unique advantage as well, for
example, its well-established categories of functions (see the last column in
Table 1.)
The main purpose of this post is to suggest that all the varied theories of
information discussed on this list may be viewed as belonging to the same
category of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation) diagrammatically represented as
the 3-node closed network in the first column of Table 1.
Table 1. The postulated universality of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation) as
manifested in information theory, semiotics, cell language theory, and
linguistics.
Category Theory
f g
A -----> B ------> C
| ^
| |
|______________|
h
ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation)
Deacon’s theory of information
Shannon’s
Theory of
information
Peirce’s theory of signs
Cell language theory
Human language
(Function)
A
Intrinsic information
Source
Object
Nucleotides*/
Amion acids
Letters
(Building blocks)
B
Referential information
Message
Sign
Proteins
Words
(Denotation)
C
Normative information
Receiver
Interpretant
Metabolomes
(Totality of cell metabolism)
Systems of words
(Decision making & Reasoning)
f
?
Encoding
Sign production
Physical laws
Second articulation
g
?
Decoding
Sign interpretation
Evoutionary selection
First and Third articulation
h
?
Information flow
Information flow
Inheritance
Grounding/
Habit
Scale
Micro-Macro?
Macro
Macro
Micro
Macro
*There may be more than one genetic alphabet of 4 nucleotides. According to
the "multiple genetic alphabet hypothesis', there are n genetic alphabets, each
consisting of 4^n letters, each of which in turn consisting of n nucleotides.
In this view, the classical genetic alphabet is just one example of the n
alphabets, i.e., the one with n = 1. When n = 3, for example, we have the
so-called 3rd-order genetic alphabet with 4^3 = 64 letters each consisting of 3
nucleotides, resulting in the familiar codon table. Thus, the 64 genetic
codons are not words as widely thought (including myself until recently) but
letters! It then follows that proteins are words and metabolic pathways are
sentences. Finally, the transient network of metbolic pathways (referred to as
"hyperstructures" by V. Norris in 1999 and as "hypermetabolic pathways" by me
more recently) correspond to texts essential to represent
arguement/reasoning/computing. What is most exciting is the recent discovery
in my lab at Rutgers that the so-called "Planck-Shannon plots" of mRNA levels
in living cells can identify function-dependent "hypermetabolic pathways"
underlying breast cancer before and after drug treatment (manuscript under
review).
Any comments, questions, or suggestions would be welcome.
Sung
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University of California, Berkeley
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