Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Koichiro Matsuno]

On 27 Oct 2017 at 3:09 AM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

 

the cogitatum which transcends us is intersubjectivity. It is not physical. The 
physical is res extensa, whereas this remains res cogitans.

 

   Loet, let me hope this will not merely be a quibble about the terms. We may 
say that the physical is for res extensa in classical physics. However, we are 
not sure whether the same would apply to quantum physics supporting the 
infrastructure of our material world. Some philosophers sympathetic to quantum 
physics are in favor of contrasting res potentia a la Werner Heisenberg with 
res extensa. Once we are determined to face res potentia, that is for those 
individuals as the concrete vehicles carrying uncountable counter-factual 
conditionals. Thus, the inter-individual relationship mediated by emitting and 
absorbing the quantum particles, whether big or small, is in charge of 
revealing the factual conditionals through the measurement internal to the 
participating individuals. One advantage of focusing on internal measurement 
may be the likelihood for approaching persistence or duration as the quality 
directly retrievable from the underlying individual events. The additional 
ontological commitment required here is kept to a bare minimum such as allowing 
for res potentia for the individuals.  

 

Koichiro Matsuno

 

 

 

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 3:09 AM
To: Terrence W. DEACON ; Foundation of Information Science 

Subject: Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

 

Dear Terry and colleagues, 

 

(...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to establish 
these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological grounding where the 
grounded normative relation is the preservation of the systemic physical 
properties that produce the norm-preserving dynamic. 

I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, whereas I 
agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human beings, this 
grounding of subjective normativity can be found in intersubjectivity. Whereas 
the subjective remains cogitans (in doubt), the intersubjective can be 
considered as cogitatum (the thing about which one remains in doubt). 

 

For Descartes this cogitatum is the Other of the Cogito. The Cogito knows 
itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished from what transcends it, the 
Transcendental or, in Descartes' terminology, God. (This is the ontological 
proof of God's presence. Kant showed that this proof does not hold: God cannot 
be proven to exist.) Husserl (1929) steps in on this point in the Cartesian 
Meditations: the cogitatum which transcends us is intersubjectivity. It is not 
physical. The physical is res extensa, whereas this remains res cogitans. It 
cannot be retrieved, but one has reflexive access to it.

 

Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. The 
intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) communication. The codes 
in the communication can relatively be stabilized. One can use the metaphor of 
eigenvectors of a communication matrix. They remain our constructs, but they 
guide the communication. (Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a 
misunderstanding.) Using Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of the codes 
of communication, one can continue this metaphor and consider other than the 
first eigenvector as "functional differentiations" which enable the 
communication to process more complexity. The model is derived from the Trias 
Politica: problems can be solved in one of the branches or the other. The 
normativity of the judiciary is different from the normativity of the 
legislative branch, but they both ground the normativity that guides us.

 

The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly communication 
about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication is different from, for 
example, political communication. An agent ("consciousness" in Luhmann's 
terminology) recombines reflexively and has to integrate because of one's 
contingency. The transcendental grounding is in the communication; it remains 
uncertain. Fortunately, because this implies that it can be reconstructed (by 
us albeit not as individuals). 

 

A non-human does not know oneself to be contingent. Lots of things follow from 
this; for example, that the non-human does not have access to our 
intersubjectivity as systems of expectations.

 

Best, 

Loet

 

  _  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

  l...@leydesdorff.net ;  
 http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty,   SPRU, University of Sussex; 

Guest Professor   Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; 
Visiting Professor,  

Re: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information

[Sungchul Ji]

Hi FISers,


Reading the recent posts on "information" and related issues by Terry, Joseph, 
Pedro, Mark,  Krassimir, Loet, and others suggested to me the following 
possible definition of information (see Table 1) that may be consistent with 
those proposed by Terry, Shannon, Volkenstein,  Saussure, and Peirce (as I 
understand him), to varying degrees.

Table 1.  A unified definition of information based on the  Mechanism of 
Irreversible Triadic Relation (MITR):

“Information is something that is transferred from A (e.g., the sender) to C 
(e.g., the receiver) mediated by B (e.g., sound signal) in such a manner that A 
and C become coupled, correlated, or coordinated.”

 f  g
A ---> B ---> C
 |  
 ^
 |  
  |
 ||
 h




Terry

Shannon

Volkenstein

Peirce

Saussure

A

Object

Sender

-

Object

Object

B

Sign

Message

-

Sign

Sign

C

Interpretant

Receiver

-

Interpretant

-

f

Intrinsic

Coding

Amount

Natural process

Differentiation (?)

g

Referential

Decoding

Meaning

Mental process

Arbitrariness

h

Normative

Communication

Value

Correspondence/
Communication

-





I have the feeling that that number of columns in Table 1 can be increased to 
the right significantly, as we extend the MITR-based definition of information 
to various fields of inquires in natural and human sciences.


Any suggestions, comments or corrections would be welcome.


Sung







From: Terrence W. DEACON 
Sent: Sunday, October 8, 2017 8:30 PM
To: Sungchul Ji
Cc: KrassimirMarkov; foundationofinformationscience; 钟义信
Subject: Re: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information

Against "meaning"

I think that there is a danger of allowing our anthropocentrism to bias the 
discussion. I worry that the term 'meaning' carries too much of a linguistic 
bias.
By this I mean that it is too attractive to use language as our archtypical 
model when we talk about information.
Language is rather the special case, the most unusual communicative adaptation 
to ever have evolved, and one that grows out of and depends on 
informationa/semiotic capacities shared with other species and with biology in 
general.
So I am happy to see efforts to bring in topics like music or natural signs 
like thunderstorms and would also want to cast the net well beyond humans to 
include animal calls, scent trails, and molecular signaling by hormones. And it 
is why I am more attracted to Peirce and worried about the use of Saussurean 
concepts.
Words and sentences can indeed provide meanings (as in Frege's Sinn - "sense" - 
"intension") and may also provide reference (Frege's Bedeutung - "reference" - 
"extension"), but I think that it is important to recognize that not all signs 
fit this model. Moreover,

A sneeze is often interpreted as evidence about someone's state of health, and 
a clap of thunder may indicate an approaching storm.
These can also be interpreted differently by my dog, but it is still 
information about something, even though I would not say that they mean 
something to that interpreter. Both of these phenomena can be said to provide 
reference to something other than that sound itself, but when we use such 
phrases as "it means you have a cold" or "that means that a storm is 
approaching" we are using the term "means" somewhat metaphorically (most often 
in place of the more accurate term "indicates").

And it is even more of a stretch to use this term with respect to pictures or 
diagrams.
So no one would say the a specific feature like the ears in a caricatured face 
mean something.
Though if the drawing is employed in a political cartoon e.g. with exaggerated 
ears and the whole cartoon is assigned a meaning then perhaps the exaggeration 
of this feature may become meaningful. And yet we would probably agree that 
every line of the drawing provides information contributing to that meaning.

So basically, I am advocating an effort to broaden our discussions and 
recognize that the term information applies in diverse ways to many different 
contexts. And because of this it is important to indicate the framing, whether 
physical, formal, biological, phenomenological, linguistic, etc.
For this reason, as I have suggested before, I would love to have a 
conversation in which we try to agree about which different uses of the 
information concept are appropriate for which contexts. The classic 
syntax-semantics-pragmatics distinction introduced by Charles Morris has often 
been cited in this respect, though it too is in my opinion too limited to the 
linguistic 

Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Loet and colleagues,

One of the advantages of a new discipline is the simplification of 
discourse, the creation of a new space where you can easily build new 
knowledge without copious management of other unnecessary, 
circumstantial ideas. I have already quoted in this list the famous 
quotation by Whitehead about the "mental liberation" in arithmetic that 
implied the use of zero. Something similar may happen nowadays 
concerning the wide reaching domains of information. But I see two 
problems about delineating the "information zero".
One, that life is not incorporated yet as the starting point of 
communication (I do not mean "biology"--rather it is each one's 
biography, historically and evolutionarily augmented/contemplated). At 
the end, every living agent "communicates" with other living agents, and 
the available tools to do that are signals that mean "portions" of its 
own life-cycle. We humans have shared sensorimotor tools that provide 
the common ground for our communication, for exporting those missing 
portions or needs in our lives. Formalizing the life cycle is quite 
problematic, however.
And the second "zero" concerns the need to constitute a new 
informational observer, endowed with the general mental characteristics 
required for information science. The observer of physics, chemistry, 
etc., is well equipped and we assume that his/her mind is properly 
"charged" with the corresponding principles, theories, experiences, etc. 
But in the case of info science, the topic matter is open-ended. What is 
the "charge" of this new observer? Depending on our specializations, we 
equip this observer with our preferred approach; so our unending back 
and forth. But many other knowledge bodies (or at least the 4-5 basic 
disciplines that Xueshan was commenting) may be needed to make sense of 
that particular informational/communicational phenomenon in cells, 
organisms, people, disciplines, enterprises, countries... If we accept 
this "ecumenical" contemplation of information science, how can that 
multi-observer be viable at all? Our cognitive limitations are so 
obvious... An elementary provisional solution (a pre-zero, a pre-science 
tool) for making it possible was suggested in those ten principles weeks 
ago.
In any case, I think these two absences or "zeroes" might be 
successfully filled in, without having to wait for too long.


Best wishes--Pedro

El 26/10/2017 a las 20:08, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:

Dear Terry and colleagues,

(...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to 
establish these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological 
grounding where the grounded normative relation is the preservation 
of the systemic physical properties that produce the norm-preserving 
dynamic.
I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, 
whereas I agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human 
beings, this grounding of subjective normativity can be found in 
intersubjectivity. Whereas the subjective remains/cogitans/ (in 
doubt), the intersubjective can be considered as/cogitatum/ (the thing 
about which one remains in doubt).


For Descartes this/cogitatum/ is the Other of the/Cogito./ 
The/Cogito/ knows itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished 
from what transcends it, the Transcendental or, in Descartes' 
terminology, God. (This is the ontological proof of God's presence. 
Kant showed that this proof does not hold: God cannot be proven to 
exist.) Husserl (1929) steps in on this point in the/Cartesian 
Meditations/: the/cogitatum/ which transcends us is intersubjectivity. 
It is not physical. The physical is/res extensa/, whereas this 
remains/res cogitans./ It cannot be retrieved, but one has reflexive 
access to it.


Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. 
The intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) 
communication. The codes in the communication can relatively be 
stabilized. One can use the metaphor of eigenvectors of a 
communication matrix. They remain our constructs, but they guide the 
communication. (Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a 
misunderstanding.) Using Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of 
the codes of communication, one can continue this metaphor and 
consider other than the first eigenvector as "functional 
differentiations" which enable the communication to process more 
complexity. The model is derived from the /Trias Politica/: problems 
can be solved in one of the branches or the other. The normativity of 
the judiciary is different from the normativity of the legislative 
branch, but they both ground the normativity that guides us.


The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly 
communication about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication 
is different from, for example, political communication. An agent 
("consciousness" in Luhmann's terminology) recombines reflexively and 
has to integrate because of