[Fis] Intelligence & Meaning & The Brain

Fri Nov 18 13:45:52 CET 2016

Dear Christophe and FIS Colleagues,

In my second cent of the week, let me thank for the positive comments on 
the presentation. You raise a very interesting point that can be 
analyzed from quite different angles. Strategically, my opinion is that 
information science (or information studies) should not abandon its 
tight interrelationship with humanities, because we are too weak to 
loose an important allied at the time being, and because most of the 
humanities' contents are excellent manifestations of 
combinatory-informational-symmetrical games. The series of meetings 
regularly organized by our Symmetry Institute colleagues are showing 
that interweaving very elegantly. How to tell a story, the nucleus of 
drama, poetry, novels, movie making, and all sort of "narratives", is 
one of the bulwarks to be won "informationally". Intelligence as the 
efficient organization of information flows around adaptive purposes in 
the advancement of a life cycle should not be so far from attempting 
some explanation of what a story is: a condensate of human communication 
(quite interesting the recent book by Randy Olson: Houston we have a 
narrative. Why science needs story. 2015). Maybe in the next session on 
brain dynamics and topology we could find some further connection with 
this topic.
Another different reason to strengthen the link with humanities would be 
to consider that they are in themselves closer to the "social" domain, 
and that Great Domains should not be multiplied, so that they not loose 
their integrative appeal. And also, if we let things speak by 
themselves, what would be the most cogent interpretation of the contents 
the disciplinary-citation maps are showing? Initially Rosenbloom 
proposed the three leaves "clover" (demanding extra room for the 
computational), I have advocated the four leaves (substituting for the 
informational), and you were arguing the five leaves... That's fine. In 
part, the interpretation depends on the further goals, and we both are 
sharing the societal concern. I think discussion on this vision of the 
Great Domains may be important for the future cohesion of information 
studies in front of the enormous power of the technological world and 
the tunnel vision their new means of communication are imprinting on our 
societies (Brexit, USxit, and so on)...

All the best
--Pedro

El 17/11/2016 a las 16:31, Christophe escribió:
>
> Dear Pedro,
> Thanks for the copy of your ICIS 2016 presentation which covers a lot 
> of evolutionary aspects regarding intelligence and the information flow.
> Perhaps one aspect of that subject may deserve a bit more. It is 
> “human mind”.
> For instance, your chart (N°39) on the four domains of science 
> (physical, biological, social, informational) could contain a 5^th 
> component: “humanities” in order to explicitly take into account human 
> mind. This because it is a key step in the evolution of our universe 
> (energy, matter, life, human mind) that cannot be today deduced from 
> the other domains. And also because an understanding of human mind 
> could introduce possible evolutions of human motivations for the 
> better of mindkind (you remember the evolutionary scenario where the 
> proposed interactions of anxiety management with self-consciousness 
> introduce possibilities for new understandings on human nature in 
> terms of motivations and actions. I think (and hope) that human 
> evolution is not over and this is in the direction of sheding some 
> light on a possible maturing of human self-consciousness for the 
> better of mankind). (http://philpapers.org/rec/MENPFA-3).
>
> <http://philpapers.org/rec/MENPFA-3>
> 	
> Christophe Menant, Proposal for an evolutionary approach ... 
> <http://philpapers.org/rec/MENPFA-3>
> philpapers.org
> Christophe Menant (2010). Evolutionary Advantages of 
> Inter-Subjectivity and Self-Consciousness Through Improvements of 
> Action Programs (2010). Dissertation, Tucson ...
>
>
>
> Best
> Christophe
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *De :* Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> de la part de Pedro C. 
> Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>
> *Envoyé :* jeudi 17 novembre 2016 14:09
> *À :* 'fis'
> *Objet :* [Fis] Intelligence & Meaning & The Brain
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>
> Herewith the dropbox link to the Chengdu's presentation on Intelligence
> and the Information Flow (as kindly requested by Christophe and Gordana).
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wslnk41c3lquc55/AADpm_U6xuhm6jHK0esyN-29a?dl=0
>
> About the ongoing exchanges on language and meaning, there could be some
> additional arguments to consider:
>
> 1. Evolutionary origins of language (Terry can say quite a bit about
> that). It is difficult to establish a clear stage into which well formed
> oral language would have emerged. That the basis was both gestural
> (Susan Goldin Meadow) and emotional utterances seems to be more and more
> accepted. Alarm calls for instance in some monkeys contain distinct
> sound codes that clearly imply an associated meaning on what is the
> specific predator to take care of (aerial, felines, snakes) with
> differentiated behavioral escape responses in each case. Pretty more
> complex in human protolanguages.
> 2. Nervous Systems functioning. The action-perception cycle in advanced
> mammals would be the engine of information processing and meaning
> generation. The advancement of the life cycle would be the source and
> sink of the communicative exchanges and the ultimate reference for
> meaning. (This connects with the info flows and intelligence of my
> presentation).
> 3. Human "sociotype" maintenance. As the natural social groups of humans
> grew out of proportion regarding other Anthropoidea (see Dunbar's
> number), a new form of "grooming" and group consensus was established
> around language and other emotional utterances (importance of laughter).
> Paradoxically, language's meaning becomes downsized to the level of
> small talk, just chattering to keep social bonds afloat.  The "social
> brain hypothesis" on the origins of language developed by Robin Dunbar
> and other scholars points in this direction.
>
> In my opinion, points 1 and 3 have already appeared in this list. But
> point 2 has been very rarely discussed among us (how the brain
> fabricates meaning). So, tentatively, the next discussion session will
> deal with some of this neurodynamic stuff (in preparation yet: "The
> Topological Brain"). In the meantime, Maybe Mark would like to make some
> concluding comments in order to close the present session... Thanks are
> due to him both for his preparation-work and for his patience regarding
> all the tangents in this session!
>
> Best wishes
> --Pedro
>
>
> El 16/11/2016 a las 15:51, Dai Griffiths escribió:
> > Many (most?) linguistic interactions are not propositional in the
> > sense that you imply.
> >
> > There is no verifiable equivalent to opening the fridge door for
> > utterances like "Cool", "Give us a hand won't you", "You're welcome",
> > "Justin Bieber is wonderful", "You go and sneak in round the back
> > while I distract them at the front door", and so on.
> >
> > So I doubt your 'usually', and the application to natural language.
> >
> > Dai
> >
> >
> > On 15/11/16 15:05, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >> A model is a mathematical structure making a sentence (proposition)
> >> true or false, and this, in my opinion applies to meaning in the
> >> natural language, where usually some notion of reality is involved:
> >>  the proposition "there is two beers in the fridge" is judged
> >> meaningful because we believe in a reality with fridge containing, or
> >> not, beers.
> >
>
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> The FIS initiative (Foundations of Information Science) started in 
> 1994 with a first meeting in Madrid (organized by Michael Conrad and 
> Pedro Marijuan), and was ...
>
>
>

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