Dear Krassimir and Sungchul,
I suppose this bears out Von Neumann's tongue-in-cheek advice to
Shannon! (http://www.eoht.info/page/Neumann-Shannon+anecdote)
Krassimir, just to ask about Boltzmann's use of the logs... I first
understood this to be a measure of the probability distribution of a
whol
in all three worlds but … in the physical world, it
is called *energy*, in the mental world, it is called *mental energy*, and
in the world of structures, it is called *information* (in the strict
sense). This conclusion well correlates with the suggestion of Mark Johnson
that information is both p
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for this beautiful summary.
That describes the world doesn't it? (it also describes music - which is a good
sign).
I want to say why information matters to me, not to argue about what it is.
Information matters because it enables these conversations which dissolve
bar
Dear Lou and Mark,
Thanks for this - it is very important.
A quick question: why does it have to one or the other? Does the law of the
excluded middle apply to information? Why can't it be both?
As a way of extending this, can I suggest that the boundary between the
physical and the non-physical
o use it regularly.
>
> It can be strengthen by particular
> mental practices, well described
> in the literature of Yoga.
>
> Digital Computing machines are
> not capable of this, and although
> number crunching is a way for
> Technology to assist, it is no substitute
>
Dear Alberto,
Thank you for this topic – it cuts to the heart of why we think the
study of information really matters, and most importantly, brings to
the fore the thorny issue of technology.
It has become commonplace to say that our digital computers have
changed the world profoundly. Yet at a d
You'll be amused by this on Pavlov and Kornosky by Heinz Von Foerster...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BomO7pbSVNA
The message is that one must be careful where one draws one's distinctions
What you call data-ism is a bit like the bell without the clapper ;-)
-Original Message-
From: "
ssex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
> Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>
> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University o
Dear Loet, all,
I agree with this. Our construction of reality is never that of a single
system: there are always multiple systems and they interfere with each
other in the way that you suggest. I would suggest that behind all the
ins-and-outs of codification or information and meaning is a very s
Dear Karl,
You've communicated *your* kaleidoscope rather wonderfully. Thank you!
I shall look into it...
Best wishes,
Mark
-Original Message-
From: "Karl Javorszky"
Sent: 12/02/2018 14:36
To: "Mark Johnson"
Cc: "fis"
Subject: Re: [Fis]
Dear Karl,
Do you really mean this?:
"As we look into a kaleidoscope, the first step is to make sure *that* we
all look at a kaleidoscope, and preferably the same one. The next task is
to make sure that we all perceive the *same picture*. As the kaleidoscope
produces natural numbers, this should b
Dear Loet, all,
I'm not sure there's such a problem here. I think there's an important
connection to be made through Bateson. He too talks about the importance of
redundancy (he's not alone in cybernetics, as you know - Von Foerster's
"Self organizing systems and their environments"; and Pask expl
Dear John,
Thank you very much for this - a great way to start the new year!
I'd like to ask about "communication" - it's a word which is
understood in many different ways, and in the context of cells, is
hard to imagine.
When you suggest that “the unicellular state delegates its progeny to
inte
Dear all,
Is it useful to think of the quantitative and qualitative as different
descriptions of the same thing. Even the pseudoscience describes something -
even if it is merely the ego of its inventor... But it may yet be a relevant
additional description.
This short interview with David Boh
Dear Joseph,
This is great! I'm sympathetic to the view that a reconnection with physics is
necessary and I too worry about the political implication of Luhmann's ideas,
powerful work though I find it. I've started reading Logic in Reality, but am
finding it quite hard.
I have a question abou
There are too many deep unanswered questions here for our current state of
discourse and awareness to dismiss if we wish to remain scientific. The history
of science is marked by scientific incredulity at things which turn out to be
true.
We need a logic and we need experiments. Joseph Brenner
Dear Arturo, Joseph, all,
This seems a very productive line of thought. But is "dimension" the right word?
Lou, for example, has just exercised his agency in producing a
wonderful alternative description of Russell's paradox. Is it another
dimension? Or is it just another description? It seems ve
Dear all,
There are some terms from physics which we use continually and assume
we all know what they mean. I'm taking my cue from Peter Rowland's
physics - see http://anpa.onl/pdf/S36/rowlands.pdf - in asking some
fundamental questions not only about information, but about physics
itself.
1. "Di
I was thinking that these words from A.N. Whitehead's "Science and the
modern world" (1926) are highly relevant to our discussions:
"When you are criticising the philosophy of an epoch do not chiefly direct
your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it
necessary explic
hes,
Mark
-Original Message-
From: "Loet Leydesdorff"
Sent: 15/10/2017 07:17
To: "Mark Johnson" ; "Terrence W. DEACON"
; "Sungchul Ji"
Cc: "foundationofinformationscience"
Subject: Re[2]: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information
Dear Mark:
Dear Loet,
When you say "distinguishing between the information content and the meaning of
a message requires a discourse" this is, I think, a position regarding what
scientific discourse does. There are, of course, competing descriptions of what
scientific discourse does. Does your "meaning"
relative entropy started to approach 0. What
would this do? It would maintain a counterpoint in the relative entropies
within the ensemble. Would adding the dial increase the apophasis? Or the
entropy? Or the relative entropy?
Best wishes,
Mark
-Original Message---
Which "information paradigm" is not a discourse framed by the education system?
The value of the discussion about information - circular though it appears to
be - is that we float between discourses. This is a strength. But it is also
the reason why we might feel we're not getting anywhere!
A
Dear Arturo, all,
First of all, thank you to Pedro for exciting the list again - I was missing it!
I have sympathy with Arturo's position, not because I am a
mathematician (I'm not), but because I get tired of the "posturing"
that qualitative positions produce among academics. I work in
education
Dear all,
Merry Christmas to all of you.
I tend to associate Christmas with cinema - there's always been something good
to go and see with family and friends'. This year like last year, we have a new
Star Wars film - which entertained three generations of my family last year.
This year, I'd
Dear all,
It's important that one should remain practical. Shannon's formulae are
practical. The correspondence with certain tenets of cybernetics such as
Ashby's Law, or Maturana's "Structural Coupling" presents Shannon as a
window for exploring *relations* empirically. This I understand to be Bo
Dear Bob (Ulanowicz),
I hope I didn't come across as flippant about the political situation.
The world is obviously in a very frightening and perilous state at the
moment.
Regarding ecology, Shannon and IT, the common denominator is
"counting". This is far from trivial. The disastrous economic po
Thank you Bob!
The medium is a very restricted form of communication on the internet, of
course...
Are our circular deliberations about information victims of the so-called
"information technology" which enables them? Is this a variety of
Wittgenstein's realisation that the problems of philoso
Dear Pedro and List,
I've really enjoyed leading the session on "scientific communication"
- it was an opportunity, for which I am very grateful, to explore the
nature and purpose of scientific communication, and to experiment with
different ways of communicating. It's been a fascinating couple of
Dear Moises and all,
Floridi has an excellent chapter in his "philosophy of information" called
"Against digital ontology". It's worth quoting the two fundamental
questions he asks about digital ontology:
"a. whether the physical universe might be adequately modelled digitally
and computationally
Dear all,
Just a few quick comments to relate this current discussion back to
scientific communication:
1. Taking information seriously must entail taking "communicating what
we think about information" seriously - and exploring different ways
of communicating what we think.
2. When I made my vi
ompris l'humanité - de survivre).
>
> Cordialement.
> M. Godron
> Le 29/10/2016 à 15:25, Mark Johnson a écrit :
>
> Dear Michel,
>
> Ok. Steve Keen has been close to Tony Lawson's work (he presented Minsky at
> Lawson's conference last year) - he's a
t?...
Best wishes,
Mark
-Original Message-
From: "Michel Godron"
Sent: 29/10/2016 14:06
To: "Mark Johnson"
Subject: Re: [Fis] Scientific communication
Dear Mark,
You write : "I'm guessing you are thinking of the line of thought from
Hayek to Stiglitz
omia". Quindi è giusto comunicarlo, senza alcuna
presunzione o superbia. Ho inventato davvero una una nuova concezione
economica. Complimenti per la tua capacità comunicativa e auguri.
Un abbraccio.
Francesco
2016-10-26 13:21 GMT+02:00 Mark Johnson :
Dear Jose, Francisco and Pedro, (Pedro - please co
es further administrative strings and been involved in frequent
>>> bureaucratic internecine conflicts. The book of Gregory Clark (2014, The Son
>>> also Raises) is an excellent reading on class "iron statistics" everywhere,
>>> particularly in education.
>
#x27;ll wait until I leave
> the office and get home.
>
> Dai
>
>
>>
>>
>> From: Fis [fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] on behalf of Loet Leydesdorff
>> [l...@leydesdorff.net]
>> Sent: 27 September 2016 08:27
>>
Dear FIS Colleagues,
Thank you very much for your comments. I've made a video response
which can be found here: https://youtu.be/r8T2ssGAius
The video mostly concerns Loet's comment about selection and
codification and references Sergej's point about "shared objects" (and
its relation to activity
Dear all,
Is this a question about counting? I'm thinking that Ashby noted that Shannon
information is basically counting. What do we do when we count something?
Analogy is fundamental - how things are seen to be the same may be more
important than how they are seen to be different.
It seems
Dear FIS colleagues,
I'm sympathetic to Maxine's comment: "untethered observations and
meticulous descriptions are the cornerstone of any life science. One
is not out there trying to
make others as you want them to be, but attempting to know them as
they are. The task is precisely
a challenge sinc
I'd be interested to know whether "mattering" is considered within
"meaning". I suspect "mattering" is distinct.
thinking aloud
Science isn't just meaningful. It matters to scientists. Perhaps it's
only because it matters to some people, it exists.
Re. meaning, I think the connection bet
ation of thought and percept.
> 4. Thought is singular in that thought can be the object of thought and this
> becomes a place where subject and object are coalesced.
> 5. The fusion of thought with itself is the place from which we can
> understand the fusion of ourselves with Nature in
Dear Soren, Lou and Loet,
I can appreciate that Bateson might have had it in for hypnotists and
missionaries, but therapists can be really useful! Had Othello had a
good one, Desdemona would have lived – they might have even done some
family therapy!
More deeply, Bateson’s highlighting of the dif
I'm really grateful for Maxine's summary here.
To those who query the value of phenomenology, I find myself reflecting on
what Alain Badiou and a number of others (e.g. Burrell and Morgan's
"Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis") have argued in there
being (at least) three main tren
lk about this in his cybernetic
"conversation theory"; his pupil Ranulph Glanville used to talk about a lot.
On 25 February 2016 at 06:33, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
wrote:
> Response to Mark Johnson:
>
> ?What are the conditions within which a coherent scientific discourse
Dear FIS colleagues,
I didn’t know Maxine’s work, and I’m very glad to have been introduced to
it – I’ve been reading through the 1972 edition of the Phenomenology of
Dance.
In reading this, and in reading the contributions on the list, I’ve found
myself reflecting on the relationship between “
hear, hear!
There's something important about the politics of information in this case.
Sociologist Steve Fuller has argued that the open access movement is merely
a "consumerist revolt, academic style" (see
http://sociologicalimagination.org/archives/9953/comment-page-1). It's an
interesting case
Dear FIS colleagues,
I'm curious about why the discussion about momenta matters. Does it matter
because we believe it is important to determine the boundaries of specific
discourses? Does that matter because we fear incoherence or confusion in our
discussion if we don't demarcate boundaries? An
Dear Joseph,
Perhaps we shouldn't kid ourselves that ANY social theorist could avoid
replacing human beings with abstractions! It's an academic affliction. We
should really be playwrights and artists if we wanted to avoid it.
We should worry about functionalism, though. I agree with your comme
Dear Loet, Joseph and Fis colleagues,
Some thoughts:
Pascal: "the heart has its reasons [the constraints of the body] which the
reason cannot perceive [because it is abstract]" and yet... we do come to
know the reasons of the heart - we know them long before we know reason. In
language as Joseph
Maybe I've missed something, but the subsumption I mentioned
(referring to Bateson) was not between A, B and C: these are
co-existent interacting dynamics as I understand them, and certainly a
very rigorous and powerful generative model.
I was worrying about subsumption of Bateson's "imagination"
Dear Loet and colleagues,
I wonder if an alternative view is possible: that the symbolic
codification of the sciences inherent in discourse and supported by
our universities (as they are currently constituted) is a constraint
which prevents us exploring a proper science of constraint. To
overcome
Dear Fernando,
Without wanting to spawn a new debate, I think it might be useful to flag
something up about the 'phenomenology' that you mention. I understand
Joseph's reaction to what to you say and I agree. However, phenomenology is
a rich a complex topic, and few scholars have the tenacity to d
Dear Drs Flores and de-Marcos
I very much enjoyed reading this paper: there is a lot to reflect on and I
need to spend more time with it, but I have some immediate questions which
I hope you can address.
1.
The first concerns the concept of the ‘foundations’ in your title.
Having lur
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