[Fis] Meaning
In my struggle to understand the meaning of "information" I sometimes despair of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. So it was a comfort to come across the opening paragraph of the classic monograph *An Introduction to the Theory of Probability and its Applications, *by William Feller (1950): "Probability is a mathematical discipline with aims akin to those, for example, of geometry and analytical mechanics. In each field we must carefully distinguish three aspects of the theory: a) The formal logical content, b) the intuitive background, c) the applications. The character, and the charm, of the whole structure cannot be appreciated without considering all three aspects in their proper relation." I was reminded of Claude Shannon's disclaimer that he was not talking about the "meaning" of information when he created communication theory. The word "intuition" in Feller's scheme is as slippery as the word "meaning in Shannon's, but it carries less weighty, less philosophical, and more individual, personal, idiosyncratic, more humane implications. This impression is underscored by the word "charm." I will try to keep Feller's advice in mind in my own thinking about Information. Hans Christian von Baeyer ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] John C. on The Travellers. Protestantism
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" To: "Pedro C. Marijuan" ; 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
Re: [Fis] "The Travellers"
Cari tutti, secondo me, il concetto o significato dell'informazione è l'assunzione o il prendere forma di tutti e di tutto. Vi sono tanti tipi di informazione che usano unità di misure diverse e talvolta contrastanti. Ad es, l'informazione matematica si misura in bit di entropia. Nell'informazione naturale o termodinamica l'entropia coincide con la degradazione energetica o deformazione (dis-informazione). ma non v'è contraddizione:il significato è sempre lo stesso, l'unità di misura è diversa. D'altra parte perché l'informazione matematica acquisti un significato semantico è necessario un s-codice che impoverisce l'informazione matematica e rende possibile un significato semiotico-culturale e storico-sociale.Il valore dei beni (economici) è funzione della loro informazione."La moneta è il segno del valore" (Marx). La forma del valore o il valore della forma è fondamentale e fondante. La triade semiotica è costituita da: significazione, informazione e comunicazione di cui si avvalgano l'esistenza e la conoscenza in generale. So di procurarvi qualche fastidio linguistico che potete evitare facendo finta di non avere ricevuto alcun messaggio. Intanto, grazie e un abbraccio per tutti. Francesco Rizzo. 2014-10-27 7:12 GMT+01:00 John Collier : > 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 >
