re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm model
for all communication--Terrence Deacon
Terry makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be wrong.
Guenther Witzany is on to something. our previous approaches to
information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her introduction to the
upcoming
paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, calls
"a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."
we've been using dead things to understand living things. aristotle put
us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down to their
"elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements, we'd
understand everything. Newton took us farther down that path when he said
we could understand everything using the metaphor of the "contrivance," the
machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of "mechanism."
Aristotle and Newton were wrong. Their ideas have had centuries to pan
out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind to
the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.
the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,
it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language. by
using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and crick
were able to understand what a strand of dna does and how. without language
as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark about the genome.
i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of work
of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets we've been
utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social clots we call a
galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, a Fellow of
the British interplanetary Society, says defies the laws of Newtonian and
Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between life and death.
in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.
with thanks for tolerating my opinions.
howard
____________
Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The
Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock
your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam."
David Swindle, PJ Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project;
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space
Society.
In a message dated 9/28/2015 11:47:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es writes:
>From Terry...
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Fis] Information is a
linguistic description of structures Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2015 22:13:14
-0700 From: Terrence W. Deacon _<dea...@berkeley.edu>_
(mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu) To: Pedro C. Marijuan
_<pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>_
(mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es) CC: Günther Witzany _<witz...@sbg.at>_
(mailto:witz...@sbg.at) , _<fa...@howardbloom.net>_
(mailto:fa...@howardbloom.net) , fis
_<fis@listas.unizar.es>_ (mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es) , Emanuel Diamant
_<emanl....@gmail.com>_ (mailto:emanl....@gmail.com) References:
_<000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com>_
(mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com)
_<0d34f6ef-19e6-4c9c-a9d3-aba4f5f2e...@sbg.at>_
(mailto:0d34f6ef-19e6-4c9c-a9d3-aba4f5f2e...@sbg.at)
_<56053208.2000...@aragon.es>_
(mailto:56053208.2000...@aragon.es)
As exemplified in Guenther's auxin example, and Pedro's worries about the
procrustean use of language metaphors in the discussion of inter- and
intra-cellular communication, it is likely to be problematic to use language
as
the paradigm model for all communication, much less as the foundation upon
which to build a general theory of information. From an evolutionary point
of view, language is a highly derived human idiosyncratic form of
communication that evolved only very recently in vertebrate phylogeny, in only
one
species, and is supported by a vast semiotic cognitive and social
infrastructure. Communication in a more general sense is vastly older and far
more
generic. For this reason, it is wise to avoid talking in terms of the
semantics of a cough, the meaning of a piece of music, or the syntax of a
skunk's
odor. The use of Carnap's approach to language semantics and various other
uses of linguistic categories in information theoretic analyses needs to be
understood as a special case, not the generic form. I would recommend that
presentations and comments to them be framed with appropriate caveats,
indicating whether they address such special cases of human information or are
intended to be generic.
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 4:37 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan
<_pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es) > wrote:
Dear FISers and all,
I include below another response to Immanuel post (from Guenther). I think
he has penned an excellent response--my only addition is to expostulate a
doubt. Should our analysis of the human (or cellular!) communication with
the environment be related to linguistic practices? In short, my argument is
that biological self-production becomes "la raison d'etre" of
communication, both concerning its evolutionary origins and the continuous
opening
towards the environment along the different stages of the individual's life
cycle. It is cogent that the same messenger plays quite different roles in
different specialized cells --we have to disentangle in each case how the
impinging "info" affects the ongoing life cycle (the impact upon the
transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, etc.) There is no shortcut to the endless
work
necessary--wet lab & in silico. So I think that Encode and other big projec
ts are quite useful in the continuous exploration of biological complexity
and provide us valuable conceptual stuff--but looking for hypothetical big
formalisms (I quite agree) is out sight. Molecular recognition which is the
at the fundamentals of biological organization can only provide modest
guidelines about the main informational architectures of life... beyond that,
there is too much complexity, endless complexity to contemplate,
particularly when we try to study multicellular organization. Anyhow, this
topic of
the essential informational openness of the individual's life cycle appears
to me as the Gordian knot to be cut for the advancement of our field:
otherwise we will never connect meaningfully with the endless info flows that
interconnect our societies, generated from the life cycles of individuals
and addressed to the life cycles of other individuals. Info sources, channels
for info flows, and info receptors are not mere Shannonian overtones, they
symbolically refer to the very info skeleton of our societies; or looking
dynamically it is the engine of social history and of social complexity.
Well, sorry that I could not express myself better.
all the best--Pedro
Günther Witzany wrote:
Dear all!
What is the opposite of a linguistic description? a non-linguistic
description? Please tell me one possible explanation of a non-linguistic
description. So Im not convinced of the sense of the term "information".
Concerning the "difference" of physical and semantic information: What
would you prefer in the case of plant communication. Does the chemical Auxin
represent a physical or a semantic information? Auxin is used in hormonal,
morphogenic, and transmitter pathways. As an extracellular signal at the
plant synapse, auxin serves to react to light and gravity. It also serves as
an extracellular messenger substance to send electrical signals and
functions as a synchronization signal for cell division. At the intercellular,
whole plant level, it supports cell division in the cambium, and at the tissue
level, it promotes the maturation of vascular tissue during embryonic
development, organ growth as well as tropic responses and apical dominance. In
intracellular signaling, auxin serves in organogenesis, cell development,
and differentiation. Especially in the organogenesis of roots, for example,
auxin enables cells to determine their position and their identity. These
multiple functions of auxin demonstrate that identifying the momentary usage
(its semantics) is extremely difficult because the context (investigation
object of pragmatics) of use can be very complex and highly diverse,
although the chemical property remains the same.
Yes, mathematics is an artificial language. Last century the Pythagorean
approach, mathematics represents material reality, (if we use mathematics we
reconstruct creators thoughts) was reactivated: Exact science must
represent observations as well as theories in mathematical equations. Then it
would be sure to represent reality, because brain synapse logics then could
express its own material reality. But this was proven as error. Prior to all
artificial languages we learned how to interconnect linguistic utterances
with practical behavior in socialisation; therefore the ultimate
meta-language is everyday language with its visible superficial grammar and
its
invisible deep grammar that transports the intended meaning. How should
computers
extract deep grammar structures out of measurable superficial syntax
structures? In the case of ENCODE project (to find the human genome primary
data
structures) this was the aim which got financial support of 3 billion
dollars with the result of detecting the superficial grammar only, nothing
else.
Best Wishes
Guenther
Am 24.09.2015 um 07:47 schrieb Emanuel Diamant:
Dear FIS colleagues,
As a newcomer to FIS, I feel myself very uncomfortable when I have to
interrupt the ongoing discourse with something that looks for me quite natural
but is lacking in our current public dialog. What I have in mind is that
in every discussion or argument exchange, first of all, the grounding axioms
and mutually agreed assumptions should be established and declared as the
basis for further debating and reasoning. Maybe in our case, these things
are implied by default, but I am not a part of the dominant coalition. For
this reason, I would dare to formulate some grounding axioms that may be
useful for those who are not FIS insiders:
1. Information is a linguistic description of structures observable in a
given data set
2. Two types of data structures could be distinguished in a data set:
primary and secondary data structures.
3. Primary data structures are data clusters or clumps arranged or
occurring due to the similarity in physical properties of adjacent data
elements.
For this reason, the primary data structures could be called physical data
structures.
4. Secondary data structures are specific arrangements of primary data
structures. The grouping of primary data structures into secondary data
structures is a prerogative of an external observer and it is guided by his
subjective reasons, rules and habits. The secondary data structures exist only
in the observer’s head, in his mind. Therefore, they could be called
meaningful or semantic data structures.
5. As it was said earlier, Description of structures observable in a data
set should be called “Information”. In this regard, two types of
information must be distinguished – Physical Information and Semantic
Information.
6. Both are language-based descriptions; however, physical information can
be described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is also
a language), while semantic information can be described only by means of
natural human language.
This is a concise set of axioms that should preface all our further
discussions. You can accept them. You can discard them and replace them with
better ones. But you can not proceed without basing your discussion on a
suitable and appropriate set of axioms.
That is what I have to say at this moment.
My best regards to all of you,
Emanuel.
--
-------------------------------------------------
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_ (tel:+34%20976%2071%203526) (& 6818)
_pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es)
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
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--
Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
--
-------------------------------------------------
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.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es)
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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