Dear Howard, lists, Very good - what should be added is just that bits are symbols in another sense than Peirce's sense of symbol. Maybe we can compare it to the old vocabulary of structural linguistics - words are made up of units which may be signs (in-flat-ion), but each of these are made up of units which are not themselves signs because not having any meaning i-n, f-l-a-t, etc.). The bits of information theory are constituents of signs, meaningless when taken one by one, but constituting signs in their combinations. Best F
Den 05/10/2014 kl. 03.53 skrev Howard Pattee <hpat...@roadrunner.com<mailto:hpat...@roadrunner.com>> : At 01:39 PM 10/4/2014, Gary Fuhrman quotes Peirce: Peirce: "When an assertion is made, there really is some speaker, writer, or other signmaker who delivers it; and he supposes there is, or will be, some hearer, reader, or other interpreter who will receive it. It may be a stranger upon a different planet, an æon later; or it may be that very same man as he will be a second after. In any case, the deliverer makes signals to the receiver." HP: Here is another view of how this works. In our case, from the moment we type an assertion, draw a diagram, or attach a photo, all the communicated information is immediatelycoded into bit sequences by Boolean algebra (not logic) and transmitted worldwide by Hertzian waves or light (the same thing at shorter wavelengths). In principle, all the coding can be done by Peirce Arrows (NAND gates) and all the electrons and waves obey Maxwell's equations. At the receiver sequences are decoded, and the sender and receiver do not care about the math, physics, or the bit sequences, which is precisely why the bit sequences are pure symbols and not icons, indices, or any tokens with intrinsic physical similarities or meanings. In the language of physics, the conditions for a pure symbol vehicle with the function of efficiently communicating information of any type is that neither the physical structure nor the sequential order of the symbols are determined or influenced by physical laws. That means the sequences do not differ significantly in energy or forces between them. All efficient information structures like sequences and memories are called energy degenerate. That does not mean communication is independent of laws. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says that every bit of information added, erased, coded, decoded or used will dissipate a little energy (On the Internet this adds up to enormous energy dissipation). Also, the speed and size of symbol manipulating chemistry in brains or hardware gates is limited by quantum mechanics. In the language of Communication Theory, for efficient communication of any type of information, all the meaning should be hidden by codes that translate the information into meaningless symbols. Howard
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
