[Fis] A provocative issue
Rafael Capurro
rafael at capurro.de
Mon Dec 12 16:18:06 CET 2016
Dear Pedro,
your wise comments are no less inspiring for me than the last comments
by Loet, namely that the concept of information is 'relative' to each
context (and therefore 'objective' with regard to such context). This
happens with other concepts too, of course. I said this in my PhD
(1978). Then Fleissner and Hofkirchner created what they called
"Capurro's trilemma" that is well known in this list. Loet's remarks on
the contextual relativity is a solution (better: a dissolution) of the
trilemma. But this does not mean that we might like to make analogies,
equivocies and univocities from time to time that can be also useful or
inspiring.
The oriental thinkers you refer to, remember me what I discovered during
and after out last meeting in Vienna, that helped me to question my own
presuppositions (blindness) concerning the 'metaphysical' concept of
'in-formatio' I analized in 1978. I prefer not to quote this in extenso
but just raise you attention (maybe your curiosity) to pp. 8 ss of this
paper: http://www.capurro.de/icil2016.pdf
I still think that the concepts of message/messenger and translation
(trans-lation, tra-ducción, Über-setzen) (DNA etc.) is a key issue for
biology (and not only for biology). I say this without all your
knowledge regarding biology.
If after twenty years (I remember our meeting in Vienna in 1995)
discussing this concept we can say that at least we were able to
question again and again our presuppositions and this is the spirit of
science (and philosophy).
best
Rafael
>
>
>>>> Dear Arturo and FISers
>>>>
>>>> We will forgive your life! Some other people in this list also
>>>> have strong reservations to a single, canonical approach to
>>>> information, either from Shannon, Boltzmann, or Fisher backgrounds.
>>>> In my case, mostly biologically and socially grounded
>>>> ("sociotype"), I see a complex panorama of biological information,
>>>> mostly "relative" concerning communication with the environment
>>>> (via cellular signaling systems), but sort of "objective"
>>>> concerning the inner self-production processes (shared DNA and
>>>> genetic/translation and many other codes). But both are elegantly
>>>> intertwined in the advancement of a life cycle. My hunch is that
>>>> this type of relative/objective duality culminating in existential
>>>> maintenance has some generality and could be "exported" to physics
>>>> too. It is curious that some oriental thinkers (Chu-Hsi or Zhu Xi,
>>>> 9 Centuries ago) had already advanced sort of similar ideas...
>>>> Well, above all, info is "paradoxical" and has kept all of us
>>>> amused in this list, at least for the past twenty years!
>>>>
>>>> Best--Pedro
>>>> PS. Let me remind that you have not answered yet my topo-evo
>>>> comments in the earliest messages. That point is, I think, very
>>>> important in the present discussion.
>>>>
>>>> El 11/12/2016 a las 16:57, tozziarturo at libero.it escribió:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear FISers,
>>>>>
>>>>> I know that some of you are going to kill me, but there’s
>>>>> something that I must confess.
>>>>>
>>>>> I notice, from the nice issued raised by Francesco Rizzo, Joseph
>>>>> Brenner, John Collier, that the main concerns are always
>>>>> energetic/informational arguments and accounts.
>>>>>
>>>>> Indeed, the current tenets state that all is information,
>>>>> information being a real quantity that can be measured through
>>>>> informational entropies.
>>>>>
>>>>> But… I ask to myself, is such a tenet true?
>>>>>
>>>>> When I cook the pasta, I realize that, by my point of view, the
>>>>> cooked pasta encompasses more information than the not-cooked one,
>>>>> because it acquires the role of something that I can eat in order
>>>>> to increase my possibility to preserve myself in the hostile
>>>>> environment that wants to destroy me. However, by the point of
>>>>> view of the bug who eats the non-cooked pasta, my cooked pasta
>>>>> displays less information for sure. Therefore, information is a
>>>>> very subjective measure that, apart from its relationship with the
>>>>> observer, does not mean very much… Who can state that an event or
>>>>> a fact displays more information than another one?
>>>>>
>>>>> And, please, do not counteract that information is a quantifiable,
>>>>> objective reality, because it can be measured through
>>>>> informational entropy… Informational entropy, in its original
>>>>> Shannon’s formulation, stands for an ergodic process (page 8 of
>>>>> the original 1948 Shannon’s seminal paper), i.e.: every sequence
>>>>> produced by the processes is the same in statistical properties,
>>>>> or, in other words, a traveling particle always crosses all the
>>>>> points of its phase space. However, in physics and biology, the
>>>>> facts and events are never ergodic. Statistical homogeneity is
>>>>> just a fiction, if we evaluate the world around us and our
>>>>> brain/mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> Therefore, the role of information could not be as fundamental as
>>>>> currently believed.
>>>>>
>>>>> P.S.: topology analyzes information by another point of view, but
>>>>> it’s an issue for the next time, I think…
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *Arturo Tozzi*
>>>>>
>>>>> AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
>>>>>
>>>>> Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
>>>>>
>>>>> Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
>>>>>
>>>>> http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Fis mailing list
>>>>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
>>>>> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>> 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 0
>>>> 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>>>> Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
>>>> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>>>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Fis mailing list
>>>> Fis at listas.unizar.es
>>>> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Prof.em. Dr. Rafael Capurro
>>> Hochschule der Medien (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany
>>> Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics (http://www.capurro-fiek-foundation.org)
>>> Distinguished Researcher at the African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE), Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
>>> Chair, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) (http://icie.zkm.de)
>>> Editor in Chief, International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE) (http://www.i-r-i-e.net)
>>> Postal Address: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
>>> E-Mail:rafael at capurro.de
>>> Voice: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
>>> Homepage:www.capurro.de
>>
>>
>> --
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> 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 0
>> 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>> Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
>> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
> --
> Prof.em. Dr. Rafael Capurro
> Hochschule der Medien (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany
> Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics (http://www.capurro-fiek-foundation.org)
> Distinguished Researcher at the African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE), Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
> Chair, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) (http://icie.zkm.de)
> Editor in Chief, International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE) (http://www.i-r-i-e.net)
> Postal Address: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
> E-Mail:rafael at capurro.de
> Voice: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
> Homepage:www.capurro.de
--
Prof.em. Dr. Rafael Capurro
Hochschule der Medien (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany
Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics (http://www.capurro-fiek-foundation.org)
Distinguished Researcher at the African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE), Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Chair, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) (http://icie.zkm.de)
Editor in Chief, International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE) (http://www.i-r-i-e.net)
Postal Address: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-Mail: rafael at capurro.de
Voice: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
Homepage: www.capurro.de
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