Dear John,
Thank you for your note of October 27 which helped to bring several things
into focus for me. First, Pedro's "The Travellers" can be seen as a
questioning of all but some part of any single current approach to
information and meaning.
Suppose I assume that all existence, including our experience of it, has
meaning. The term information sciences refers to how we abstract from this
ontology to be able to 'handle' it within language, but information itself
has the complex properties of existence. The task is not so much, then, to
use semiotics to understand or extend a limited, reduced concept of
information, but to start with another description of the existential field
and the nature of complex information in it.
My opposition to placing semiotics 'between' reality and information is thus
a little like protestantism, which started out by rejecting the necessity of
an intermediary (the Pope) between man and God. (This thesis is something
like anti-representationalism in theories of the mind.)
Frederik Stjernfelt has just published a fascinating book /Natural
Propositions/, on Peirce's Theory of Dicisigns (discussed in the
Biosemiotics list). In it, he traces the evolution of Peirce's thinking
toward greater and greater realism and mentions Peirce's critique of dogma
as blocking inquiry. I feel we should now apply this critique to Peircean
semiotics itself and make sure that any semiotics we use does not depend on
an arbitrary classification of natural processes in which a linguistic
(propositional) framework determines the applicable logic.
Finally, I refer those who question my original assumption to Floridi whose
critical insight that all information (and therefore everything) has value
is at the foundation of his philosophy of information. I cannot separate
value and meaning.
Best regards,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Collier" <colli...@ukzn.ac.za>
To: "Pedro C. Marijuan" <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>; <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 7:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] "The Travellers"
Folks,
I agree with Pedro that the meaning issue is
important. After trying to give a coherent
account within established information theory for
a number of years (starting with "Intrinsic
Information" in 1990) I came to the conclusion
that information theory was not enough, and
admitted that at the Biosemiotics Gathering in
Tartu about ten years ago. I now believe that
semiotics is the way to go to understand meaning,
and that information theory alone is inadequate to the task.
Of course information theory could be extended,
but I think the correct extension is semiotics.
As Pedro said, we have not got agreement in many
years. I think it is time to give it up and move
into semiotics if we want to fully understand
information. In direct opposition to Pedro's
appeal to the Travellers metaphor, I think that
history has shown that semiotics is distinct from
information theory, and that information theory
should restrict itself to the grounds that it has
already accomplished. Oddly, Pedro seems to be
saying that information theory includes meaning
in exactly the opposite way to the way that
gypsies do not historically include Travellers. So I don't get his argument.
I believe that without an explicit theory of
signs, we cannot hope to get a theory of meaning
from the idea of information alone. I would not
be upset if I were proven wrong.
My best,
John
At 02:35 PM 2014-10-23, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
Dear FIS colleagues,
Regarding the theme of physical information raised by Igor and Joseph,
the main problematic aspect of information (meaning) is missing there.
One can imagine that as two physical systems interact, each one may be
metaphorically attributed with meaning respect the changes experimented.
But it is an empty attribution that does not bring any further
interesting aspect. Conversely we see "real" elaboration of meaning in
the cellular structures of life, particularly in brains, and we see in
our societies how scientific, technological, and economic advancements
are bringing together more and more flows of information around (social
complexity and information completely dovetail, and that's a very
important feature). Together with physical information (information
theory, logics, symmetry, etc.) each one of those realms has something
important to tell us regarding the unifying perspective necessary to
make sense of the different approaches to information: we have to
carefully listen to all of them. Thus, at the time being, the mission of
information science --or FIS at least-- would remind "The Travellers",
those people in the UK and Ireland, pretendedly "gypsies", who live a
nomadic life camping from site to site... It may look unfortunate for
the disciplinarily specialized parties, but we cannot settle any
permanent info camp --seemingly for quite a long time.
best --Pedro
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
----------
John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
Http://web.ncf.ca/collier
_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
