Dear FIS colleagues,
About the approaches to the information concept commented by Karl, Loet,
John, and Stan, let me argue that some of them have a rather narrow
conceptual domain of applicability. In Karl's approach I have already
argued that his highly suggestive conflation of the sequential vs. the
simultaneous in order to define formally information should be accompanied
by an agreeement (an in depth discussion) of the technical problem on how
to count "multidimensional partitions". Morris, Pastor, and me had found
years ago some discrepancy regarding the heuristic formula he has developed
...a few things might be different, and perhaps even more interesting.
Well, it may seem strange, but Michael Leyton's approach based on group
theory could be in close vicinity of the formal structures in Karl's.
Anyhow, the pitty is that discussimg this on the Internet is a pain of the
neck (we should have had a small ad hoc seminar during the Paris conference!).
My own track is based on the need to accomodate quite many new
observations, mostly in molecular biology & neuroscience, that cannot be
situated within the existing conceptualizations, apart from leaving the
immediate problem of "meaning" in the dark, concerning its
biological-material underpinng. So I proposed last year, in this list,
exploring the scope of an alternative conceptualization of information as
"distinction on the adjacent"... given that both terms are too heavily
loaded, I stop here and leave the matter for future discussions (of course,
the underlying reflection is that it is far more than a single concept what
we are trying to clarify during all these years in this list: the quest for
a consistent new "perspective" or disciplinary body around information).
best regards
Pedro
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