Hi Joe, and FIS colleagues,
On 28 Feb 2012, at 19:16, joe.bren...@bluewin.ch wrote:
Dear Pedro, John and Colleagues,
The article by Terrence Deacon in the book referred to by John is
entitled "What is Missing from Theories of Information?" and, as
Pedro has indicated, it and Deacon's new book Incomplete Nature. How
Mind Emerged from Matter may be major new additions to the
foundations of information. Among other things, far from supporting
"it from bit", Deacon provides expert arguments against this
position, adopted indeed in a majority of the other articles in the
Davies compendium.
Deacon's key point is that what is missing from theories is
operation in reality of constraints, extending their role discussed
previously by Stuart Kauffmann, Bob Logan, Bob Ulanowicz, Stan and
John himself and focussing on what, as the consequence of
constraints, is absent in information and other complex processes.
I hope that many colleagues will make the effort to access this
material so that we may achieve a critical mass for its discussion
and evaluation.
If ontologically-primitive matter is assumed, and if mind emerges from
it, then something non turing emulable needs to be assume in the
working of the brain+environment. I can argue in all detail. If we
assume that there is a level of substitution of the "generalized
brain" (the portion of the universe needed for may consciousness),
such that we can function with our usual private subjective life
intact, then we cannot escape the "it from bit" and physicalism is not
defensible. Indeed physics, in that theoretical frame has to be
retrieved from arithmetic, or from any first order logical
specification of any universal (in Turing Church sense) system.
If computationalism is assumed we have, with "=>" being close to a
logical implication:
Numbers => consciousness => physicalness => Human-type of Consciousness.
Such reduction does give a key role to information processing and
computation in the 'big picture'. I am not sure something is missing
in the theories of information, once they take into account
(theoretical) computer science.
Best,
Bruno
----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----
Von: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
Datum: 21.02.2012 18:02
An:
Betreff: [Fis] stuff and non-stuff
Dear FIS colleagues,
John's comments below on that book are quite interesting. Most
approaches to information rely on "stuff" and "organization of
stuff" --information is inevitably physical, as Rolf Landauer put
long ago. However, "non stuff" and "organization of "non stuff"
might be taken as central ideas too, e.g. in Deacon's approach --
through the notion of absence. Deacon is one of the main
contributors of that book, and author of another very recent info
book that has already been referred in this list, by Joseph I think.
My further point, to connect with an unfinished message on info
science teaching some weeks ago, is that genuine informational
entities, those capable of making "distinctions" that are used for
self-constructing in permanent communication with the medium,
deserve a special status within the whole info science studies.
These distinctional entities are but the great players of the
absence game... Therfor info science teaching should cover "central
themes", "multidisciplinary recombinations", and the comparative
study of "informational-distinctional entities."
Best wishes to all!
---Pedro
John Collier escribió:
Hi all,
I am reviewing a book edited by Paul Davies and Niels Henrik
Gregersen titled Information and the Nature of Reality: From
Physics to Metaphysics. There is a lot of quasireligious stuff that
I find hard to swallow, mostly by people I have never heard of
before, but many of the chapters are by well-known scholars who
have been influential in physics and biology, as well as the
history of science. The most common thread through the articles is
that the world is not made up of "stuff" (matter), and that the
idea has been problematic since its introduction. Instead the world
is made of information (the "It from Bit" view). Interesting book,
even if you don't agree with it.
John
Professor John Collier
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292
F: +27 (31) 260 3031
email: colli...@ukzn.ac.za>>> On 2012/01/23 at 07:18 PM, in message
<4f1d967a.8070...@aragon.es>, "
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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