I suppose semioticians are interested in an individual human's sense-making in a context of human society. Or perhaps a social animal's sense making. What I think about is how life forms organize to produce increasingly complex patterns of information processing. Gordana
From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Stanley N Salthe Sent: den 13 november 2010 23:03 To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] INTELLIGENCE & INFORMATION (by Y.X.Zhong) Concerning: >The minimal claim would be that there is no intelligence without information. >For an agent, intelligence is the ability to face the >world in a meaningful >way and it increases with the number of different ways an agent is able to >respond with. It seems to me that this implies, in any non-mechanistic system, semiosis -- that is to say, a process of interpretation by the agent. Thus, intelligence would be related to the viewpoint of the agent, which would be located by its needs. Semioticians, however, have not been much engaged by this concept. Hoffmeyer claims that it is especially a social skill. STAN On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnko...@mdh.se<mailto:gordana.dodig-crnko...@mdh.se>> wrote: Dear Colleagues, Relating information with intelligence seems to me important for several reasons. I will try to suggest that intelligence might be a good conceptual tool if we want to anchor our understanding of information and knowledge in the natural world. Yixin mentions the problem of three approaches to AI which exist independently, based on the methodological doctrine of "divide and conquer". We agree that "divide and conquer" is just not enough, it is the movement in one direction, and what is needed is the full cycle -bottom up and top down - if we are to understand biological systems. The appropriate model should be generative - it should be able to produce the observed behaviors, such as done by Agent Based Models (ABM) which includes individual agents and their interactions, where the resulting global behavior in its turn affects agents' individual behavior. Unlike static objects that result from a "divide and conquer" approach, agents in ABM are dynamic. They allow for the influence from bottom up and back circularly. Central for living organisms is the dynamics of the relationships between the parts and the whole. Shannon's theory of communication is very successful in modeling communication between systems, but it is a theory that presupposes that communication exists and that mechanisms of communication are known. On the other hand if we want to answer the question why those systems communicate at all and what made them develop different mechanisms of communication we have to go to a more fundamental level of description where we find information processes and structures in biological systems. Natural computation such as described by Rozenberg and Kari in "The many facets of natural computing" http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~lila/Natural-Computing-Review.pdf includes information processing in living organisms. Generative models of intelligence may be based on info-computational approach to the evolution of living systems. Three basic steps in this construction are as follows: . The world on its basic level is potential information. (I agree with Guy on his information realism) . Dynamics of the world is computation which in general is information processing (natural computationalism or pancomputationalism) . Intelligence is a potential for (meaningful) action in the world. (I agree with Josph) The minimal claim would be that there is no intelligence without information. For an agent, intelligence is the ability to face the world in a meaningful way and it increases with the number of different ways an agent is able to respond with. (This is a statistical argument: in a dynamical world, ability of an agent to respond to a change in several different ways increases its chances for survival.) Back to the question of Raquel: can a simple organism be ascribed intelligence? - which Pedro suggests to answer in the positive by broadening the concept of intelligence. I agree with this proposed generalization for several reasons. Maturana and Varela conflate life itself with cognition (to be alive is to cognize). Similarly, we can connect the development of life (towards more and more complex organisms) with intelligence (if an organism acts meaningfully in the world, we say it acts intelligently; meaningfulness has degrees and so has intelligence). In that approach intelligence would be the property of an organism which gives it a potential to develop increasingly more complex informational structures and increasingly more complex (meaningful) responses to the environment. One can argue that increasing the repertoire of meaningful responses (interactions with the world) increases agents potential for survival and success. As a consequence this approach makes way for a basic quantitative measure of intelligence as a level of complexity of an organism providing the diversity of its responses.( Of course this measure of intelligence is not in the sense of IQ or specific individual's "smartness" but of the species increasing capability to flourish.) This view also agrees with the understanding that even in humans there are several different intelligences - linguistic, logical, kinesthetic, naturalist, emotional, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, musical, etc. If the complexity of the information processing structures and diversity of interactions with the environment are the measure, then plants and by the same token even single cells may qualify as intelligent in the sense of naturalist and kinesthetic intelligence. In sum, there are different ways to define intelligence and information dependent on what we want them to do for us. Concepts are tools used by theories. Theories are tools used by people. Many different concepts address different aspects of the world and seem to fill their purpose. >From an info-computational approach we may hope to provide a base for the >construction of generative explanatory models for the development of >intelligence by information processing in living organisms. With best regards, Gordana http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc PS More on Info-Computationalism http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc/work/publications.html -----Original Message----- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: den 12 november 2010 13:19 To: fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> Subject: Re: [Fis] INTELLIGENCE & INFORMATION (by Y.X.Zhong) Dear FIS colleagues, It is quite nice reading along the messages of this new discussion session. In particular, Krassimir's posting is very interesting for me in two senses. It represents an important research community of information scientists/engineering practitioners (strong in Easter Europe and other areas) that was not engaged in our list discussions yet, specially thinking in the common project envisioned with other parties about the International Society for Information Studies. Well, the general content of the message (now I cannot go to the many interesting details deserving specific comment) has strongly reminded me about the theoretical evolution happened in another field: string theory. About how a multiplicity of approaches from rather different angles has recently coalesced into what is known as "M-Theory"---included in the comparison is that M theory predicts the possibility of 10 exp 500 different universes... In our common quest for foundations of information science, How should we cope with so many attempts to develop general information theories? Even more, How should we cope with the different "implicit" conceptions of information, well established and logically sound within almost each disciplinary body? In what extent looks viable a possible "Info M-Theory"? Would it open an explosion of 10 exp (?) possible configurations of info realms? My impression is that the conflation of information with the intelligence discussion (while the former can be abstracted almost to completion, the latter has to be "situated", "embodied", and in general related to self-construction processes) provides ground for better formulations of the above rough questions, and maybe a radical new response. best regards ---Pedro Krassimir Markov escribió: > Dear Yi-Xin, Pedro and FIS Coleagues, > > Thank you for kind invitation. I am very glad to take part in FIS. > > During the years I have seen a stable interest to the basic problems of > informatics. This was the reason to unite more than 2000 scientists all > over the world in the ITHEA® International Scientific Society (ITHEA® ISS) > and for the last ten years to organize more than 60 conferences, to > publish two Int. Journals and more than 30 books. The Institute of > Information Theories and Applications FOI ITHEA® was established as > independent nongovernmental organization to support the collaboration > between members of ITHEA® ISS. (pls. see www.ithea.org<http://www.ithea.org> > ). Let finish this > introductory part with little information about me. My name is Krassimir > Markov. I am mathematician with specialization in computer science and I > have worked in the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the > Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 1975. > > I think, firstly we need to answer to the second question - What is the > correct concept of information? --Without proper understanding of > information, the definition of concept "intelligence" as well as all the > answers of the rest questions will be intuitive and not clear. > > There exist several common theoretical information paradigms in the > Information Science. May be, the most popular is the approach based on the > generalization of the Shannon's Information Theory [Shannon, 1949], [Lu, > 1999]. Another approach is the attempt to synthesize the existing > mathematical theories in a common structure, which is applicable for > explanation of the information phenomena [Cooman et al, 1995]. > > .... > > At the end, there exist some works that claim for theoretical generality > and aspire to be a new approach in the Information Science, but theirs > authors should clear up what they really talk about [Burgin, 1997]. > > ------------------ _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
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