Dear FIS colleagues,
The comments, days ago, by John H on "information states" were
intriguing. In my view, the differences he addresses between physical
states and informational states could be compacted as the "primacy of
the intrinsic" regarding informational entities. The physical state (in
my limited understanding) contraposes the extrinsic (boundary
conditions) and the intrinsic (state variables and "identity"
parameters), and reunites them by means of a set of dynamic equations
that express the laws of nature pertinent to the whole context. In the
information state, the intrinsic and the extrinsic cannot be separated
so easily (only some selected parts of the extrinsic become external
"information", those upon which the info entity will perform
distinctional operations), but the intrinsic is not really reducible to
a collection of variables and parameters, it is a life cycle in
progress. Then, how can we express a life cycle in a compact way so to
interact lawfully with the extrinsic? Socially we consider this new kind
of informational-subject-happenstances as "biographies", and refer to
their coupling with the extrinsic as "events."
Echoing Koichiro Matsuno (as we wrote together in 1996, after the second
FIS event in Washington 1995, in Symmetry Culture and Science, 7,3,
229-30). "This mutual upholding between symmetry and information in
theoretical science suggests a unique perspective addressing how the
description of both 'states' and 'events' could be integrated in a
unified manner."
Or in other words, the very need of a new abstraction procedure about
the social process of knowledge accretion and recombination...
I could not agree more. For an excellent review and expansion of the
notion of intrinsic information and how it is viewed extrinsically, see
the published PhD thesis of my student Scott Muller,
Asymmetry:
The Foundation of Information. By Scott Muller. Springer: Berlin.
2007. VIII, 165 p. 33 illus., Hardcover. CHF 139.50.
ISBN: 978-3-540-69883-8
I do not agree with Lin's assessment,
but there are questions of priority here that are always difficult to resolve. Scott should have,
and I told him this, be careful to be clear about what was original
to his thesis. I claim the asymmetry principle from a 1996 paper
Information Originates in Symmetry Breaking
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/infsym.pdf
In the journal Symmetry. Scott added substantially to the
justification of my basic idea. The ideas however are implicit
in MacKay, Donald M., Information, Mechanism and Meaning.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969. and Bateson, G. (1973),
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Paladin. Frogmore, St. Albans).
The first calls information a distinction that makes a difference,
and the second a difference that makes a difference. Both
permit the physical interpretation. I really wish we could get
beyond this, and deal with more substantive issues. It has
already been decided: information and interpretation of
information are different from each other.
Regards,
John
Professor John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
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