-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Fis] RV: THE FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE:
INFORMATIONAL? (R.Capurro)
Date: Tue, 19 May 2015 16:02:53 +0000
From: John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za>
Rafael, Joseph, list members,
That is an interesting way of putting it, but I think the answer is yes.
C.S. Peirce’s pragmatacism is aimed at doing exactly that. Mathematical
structures and other structural models have no implication of reality in
the sense that reality is contingent, so we need a way to test
applications. For Peirce, this is against our expectations of reality,
which give meaning to the models in particular applications (pragmatic
maxim).
This goes some way to responding to Joseph, who says:
When John C. talks about "references crossing ecology, management and
political science", what is of interest to me and perhaps others is the
'substance' so to speak of the crossing. To make things difficult
(rather than easy for a change), let us assume that this substance
includes, but is not limited to common assumptions and common attitudes.
(My informational exchanges today are more interdisciplinary because I
am paying more attention to the way in which information is processed in
the different disciplines.)
Peirce’s maxim goes a long way towards getting at the substance (you
don’t need his categories to apply his pragmatic maxim), and should be
sufficient, but I would agree that it would be easier if there are
shared presuppositions, domain specific (or not so domain specific)
paradigms in Kuhn’s sense. Because we can’t fully express our
presuppositions (Polanyi, Quine, Wittgenstein, Barwise and Perry) our
ideas can never be made fully clear without their losing anything but
tautological sense. So common ground is not always easy to find, and it
requires a fair degree of cooperation and willingness to compromise,
especially on what seem to be certainties.
Joseph also says:
The task then becomes to express the 'substance' in informational terms.
What informational terms are possible that are *not* numbers or /ad
hoc/ Peircean categories? The first thing I see is that the
corresponding logic and category theory must be non-standard or it will
miss the interactions and overlaps between disciplines. The next thing
might be to change to a process perspective, looking at the way in which
the disciplines, considered as informational entities, influence one
another, and find some formal but non-mathematical language for
referring to this. Are there any suggestions for such a language?
I think that “nonstandard” here requires at least that noncomputability
is allowed. I have written ab out this in my discussion of an
informational view of causal connection (or transfer of causation – a
version of Russell’s ‘at-at’ approach) in Information, causation and
computation
<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/CollierJohn%20formatted.pdf> (2012. /Information
and Computation:/
<http://astore.amazon.co.uk/books-books-21/detail/9814295477>/ Essays on
Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Foundations of Information
and Computation/, Ed by Gordana Dodig Crnkovic and Mark Burgin, World
Scientific). It probably requires more as well, depending on what we
mean by ‘nonstandard’. I think of nonstandard analysis as an example,
but perhaps Joseph has more in mind, or something different.
Cheers,
John
*From:* Rafael Capurro [mailto:raf...@capurro.de]
*Sent:* May 19, 2015 3:15 AM
*To:* John Collier; Joseph Brenner; PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ;
fis@listas.unizar.es
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] RV: THE FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE:
INFORMATIONAL? (R.Capurro)
then the problem is, how can a 'realist' detach theoretical problems
from the real problems of the real world.
Rafael
An earlier version was blocked due to the large set of earlier
messages. Usually I delete them if they are not relevant. I have
done that this time.
Cheers,
John
Dear fis list,
List,
Popper is famous for his Three Worlds model, in which ideas sit out
there in their own world (the others are material and mental,
roughly). The problems approach, I think, is directed at this world.
However I think that systems theorists should agree at least that
there are general problems that involve many different disciplines
(Rosen calls them sometime metaphors, but he means mathematical or
structural Formalisms that have wide generality). By solving some of
these general problems we can facilitate the generation of solutions
to more specific problems, both theoretical and practical. That is
what systems theory is about.
Popper considered himself a realist, but thought that the object of
theory (problem solutions) was verisimilitude. Exactly what that
means is still a matter of debate.
I agree with Joseph about the usefulness of the bibliometric work. I
found it interesting, working in ecology right now, that despite
many ecologists accepting that there is a socio-ecological system
that requires study to solve ecological problems, that there were
few if any references crossing ecology and management and political
science. That reflects my reading in the fields.
John
*From:* Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of
*Joseph Brenner
*Sent:* May 17, 2015 11:14 AM
*To:* PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ; fis@listas.unizar.es
<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] RV: THE FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE:
INFORMATIONAL? (R.Capurro)
Dear All,
I agree with Rafael that there is an anti-realist flavor to Popper's
concept of problems. However, it indicates to me an intiution that
there is something important going on between disciplines. This is a
dynamic aspect which I feel is not captured by diagrams such as
Loet's :-) in which the connections between disciplines are
represented by sets of lines.
I would not be so hard as Dino on bibliometrics as such, but I think
that once classifications and maps have been established, it is
important to talk about where to go next.
Best wishes,
Joseph
--
_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
