[Fis] MODERATION NOTE Re: Causation is transfer of information
Pedro C. Marijuan
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
Thu Mar 30 11:48:28 CEST 2017
To ALL discussants:
Please, take into account that posting in this list is restricted to two
messages per week. It is the Second Rule of our info club...
Best--Pedro
Fis List moderator
El 30/03/2017 a las 11:12, John Collier escribió:
>
> Dear Hector,
>
> Personally I agree that algorithmic information theory and the related
> concepts of randomness and Bennett’s logical depth are the best way to
> go. I have used them in many of my own works. When I met Chaitin a few
> years back we talked mostly about how unrewarding and controversial
> our work on information theory has been. When I did an article on
> information for the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy it was
> rejected in part becausewe of fierce divisions between supporters of
> Chaitin and supporters of Kolmogorov! The stuff I put in on Spencer
> Brown was criticized because “he was some sort of Buddhist, wasn’t
> he?” It sounds like you have run into similar problems.
>
> That is why I suggested a realignment of what this group should be
> aiming for. I think the end result would justify our thinking, and
> your work certainly furthers it. But it does need to be worked out.
> Personally, I don’t have the patience for it.
>
> John Collier
>
> Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
>
> Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>
> *From:*Hector Zenil [mailto:hzenilc at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, 30 March 2017 10:48 AM
> *To:* John Collier <Collierj at ukzn.ac.za>; fis <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
>
> Dear John et al. Some comments below:
>
> On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 9:47 AM, John Collier <Collierj at ukzn.ac.za
> <mailto:Collierj at ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
>
> I think we should try to categorize and relate information
> concepts rather than trying to decide which is the “right one”. I
> have tried to do this by looking at various uses of information in
> science, and argue that the main uses show progressive
> containment: Kinds of Information in Scientific Use
> <http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/278/269>.
> 2011. cognition, communication, co-operation. Vol 9, No 2
> <http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/22>
>
> There are various mathematical formulations of information as
> well, and I think the same strategy is required here. Sometimes
> they are equivalent, sometimes close to equivalent, and sometimes
> quite different in form and motivation. Work on the foundations of
> information science needs to make these relations clear. A few
> years back (more than a decade) a mathematician on a list
> (newsgroup) argued that there were dozens of different
> mathematical definitions of information. I thought this was a bit
> excessive, and argued with him about convergences, but he was
> right that they were mathematically different. We need to look at
> information theory structures and their models to see where they
> are equivalent and where (and if) they overlap. Different
> mathematical forms can have models in common, sometimes all of them.
>
> The agreement among professional mathematicians is that the correct
> definition of randomness as opposed to information is the Martin Loef
> definition for the infinite asymptotic case, and Kolmogorov-Chaitin
> for the finite case. Algorithmic probability (Solomonoff, Levin) is
> the theory of optimal induction and thus provides a formal universal
> meaning to the value of information. Then the general agreement is
> also that Bennett's logical depth separates the concept of randomness
> from information structure. No much controversy in in there on the
> nature of classical information as algorithmic information. Notice
> that 'algorithmic information' is not just one more definiton of
> information, IS the definition of mathematical information (again, by
> way of defining algorithmic randomness). So adding 'algorithmic' to
> information is not to talk about a special case that can then be
> ignored by philosophy of information.
>
> All the above builds on (and well beyond) Shannon Entropy, which is
> not even very properly discussed in philosophy of information beyond
> its most basic definition (we rarely, if ever, see discussions around
> mutual information, conditional information, Judea Pearl's
> interventionist approach and counterfactuals, etc), let alone anything
> of the more advanced areas mentioned above, or a discussion on the now
> well established area of quantum information that is also comletely
> ignored.
>
> This is like trying to do philosophy of cosmology discussing Gamow and
> Hubble but ignoring relativity, or trying to do philosophy of language
> today discussing Locke and Hume but not Chomsky, or doing philosophy
> of mind discussing the findings of Ramon y Cajal and claiming that his
> theories are not enough to explain the brain. It is some sort of
> strawman fallacy contructing an opponent living in the 40s to claim in
> 2017 that it fails at explaining everything about information. Shannon
> Entropy is a counting-symbol function, with interesting applications,
> Shannon himself knew it. It makes no sense to expect a counting-symbol
> function to tell anything interesting about information after 60
> years. I refer again to my Entropy deceiving paper:
> https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05972
>
> I do not blame philosophers on this one, phycisists seem to assign
> Shannon Entropy some mystical power, this is why I wrote a paper
> proving how it cannot be used in graph complexity as some phycists
> have recently suggested (e.g. Bianconi via Barabasi). But this is the
> kind of discussion that we should have having, telling phycisists not
> to go back to the 40s when it comes to characterizing new objects. If
> Shannon Entropy fails at characterizing sequences it will not work for
> other objects (graphs!).
>
> I think the field of philosophy of information cannot get serious
> until serious discussion on topics above starts to take place. Right
> now the field is small and carried out by a few mathematicians and
> phycisists. Philosophers are left behind because they are choosing to
> ignore all the theory developed in the last 50 to 60 years. I hope
> this is taken constructively. I think we philosophers need to step up,
> if we are not be leading the discussion at least we should not be 50
> or 60 years behind. I have tried to to close that gap but usually I
> also get convenently ignored =)
>
> I have argued that information originates in symmetry breaking
> (making a difference, if you like, but I see it as a dynamic
> process rather than merely as a representation) Information
> Originates in Symmetry Breaking
> <http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/infsym.pdf> (/Symmetry/ 1996).
>
> Very nice paper. I agree on symmetry breaking, I have similar ideas:
>
> https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1572
>
> (published in the journal of Natural Computing)
>
> On how symmetric rules can produce assymetric information.
>
> Best,
>
> Hector Zenil
>
> http://www.hectorzenil.net/
>
> I adopt what I call dynamical realism, that anything that is real
> is either dynamical or interpretable in dynamical terms. Not
> everyone will agree.
>
> John Collier
>
> Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
>
> Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>
> *From:*Guy A Hoelzer [mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu
> <mailto:hoelzer at unr.edu>]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 29 March 2017 1:44 AM
> *To:* Sungchul Ji <sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu
> <mailto:sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu>>; Terry Deacon
> <deacon at berkeley.edu <mailto:deacon at berkeley.edu>>; John Collier
> <Collierj at ukzn.ac.za <mailto:Collierj at ukzn.ac.za>>; Foundations of
> Information Science Information Science <fis at listas.unizar.es
> <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
>
> Greetings all,
>
> It seems that the indigestion from competing definitions of
> ‘information’ is hard to resolve, and I agree with Terry and
> others that a broad definition is preferable. I also think it is
> not a problem to allow multiple definitions that can be
> operationally adopted in appropriate contexts. In some respects,
> apparently competing definitions are actually reinforcing. For
> example, I prefer to use ‘information’ to describe any difference
> (a distinction or contrast), and it is also true that a subset of
> all differences are ones that ‘make a difference’ to an observer.
> When we restrict ‘information’ to differences that make a
> difference it becomes inherently subjective. That is certainly
> not a problem if you are interested in subjectivity, but it would
> eliminate the rationality of studying objective ‘information’,
> which I think holds great promise for understanding dynamical
> systems. I don’t see any conflict between ‘information’ as
> negentropy and ‘information’ as a basis for decision making. On
> the other hand, semantics and semiotics involve the attachment of
> meaning to information, which strikes me as a separate and
> complementary idea. Therefore, I think it is important to sustain
> this distinction explicitly in what we write. Maybe there is a
> context in which ‘information’ and ‘meaning’ are so intertwined
> that they cannot be isolated, but I can’t think of one. I’m sure
> there are plenty of contexts in which the important thing is
> ‘meaning’, and where the (more general, IMHO) term ‘information’
> is used instead. I think it is fair to say that you can have
> information without meaning, but you can’t have meaning without
> information. Can anybody think of a way in which it might be
> misleading if this distinction was generally accepted?
>
> Regards,
>
> Guy
>
> On Mar 28, 2017, at 3:26 PM, Sungchul Ji
> <sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu <mailto:sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu>>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Fisers,
>
> I agree with Terry that "information" has three
> irreducible aspects ---/amount/,/meaning/, and/value/. These
> somehow may be related to another triadic relation called
> the ITR as depicted below, although I don't know the exact
> rule of mapping between the two triads. Perhaps, 'amount' = f,
> 'meaning' = g, and 'value' = h ? .
>
> f g
>
> Object ---------------> Sign -------------->
> Interpretant
>
> | ^
> | |
> | |
> | |
> |_________________________________|
>
> h
>
> *Figure 1.* The/Irreducible Triadic Relation/(ITR) of
> seimosis (also called sign process or communication) first
> clearly articulated by Peirce to the best of my
> knowledge./Warning/: Peirce often replaces Sign with
> Representamen and represents the whole triad, i.e., Figure 1
> itself (although he did not use such a figure in his
> writings) as the Sign. Not distinguishing between these two
> very different uses of the same word "Sign" can lead to
> semiotic confusions. The three processes are defined as
> follows: f = sign production, g = sign interpretation, h =
> information flow (other ways of labeling the arrows are
> not excluded). Each process or arrow reads "determines",
> "leads", "is presupposed by", etc., and the three
> arrows constitute a/commutative triangle/of category theory,
> i.e., f x g = h, meaning f followed by g ledes to the same
> result as h.
>
> I started using the so-called ITR template,*Figure 1*,
> about 5 years ago, and the main reason I am bringing it up
> here is to ask your critical opinion on my
> suggestion published in 2012 (Molecular Theory of the Living
> Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical
> Applications, Springer New York, p ~100 ?) that there are two
> kinds of causality -- (i) the energy-dependent causality
> (identified with/Processes f/and///g/in*Figure 1*) and (ii)
> the information (and hence code)-dependent causality
> (identified with/Process h/). For convenience, I coined the
> term 'codality' to refer to the latter to contrast it with the
> traditional termcausality.
>
> I wonder if we can view John's idea of the relation between
> 'information' and 'cause' as being an alternative way of
> expressing the same ideas as the "energy-dependent causality"
> or the "codality" defined in F*igure 1.*
>
> All the best.
>
> Sung
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es
> <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> on behalf of Terrence
> W. DEACON <deacon at berkeley.edu <mailto:deacon at berkeley.edu>>
> *Sent:*Tuesday, March 28, 2017 4:23:14 PM
> *To:*John Collier
> *Cc:*fis
> *Subject:*Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
>
> Corrected typos (in case the intrinsic redundancy didn't
> compensate for these minor corruptions of the text):
>
> information-beqaring medium = information-bearing medium
>
> appliction = application
>
> conceptiont = conception
>
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Terrence W.
> DEACON<deacon at berkeley.edu <mailto:deacon at berkeley.edu>>wrote:
>
> Dear FIS colleagues,
>
> I agree with John Collier that we should not assume to
> restrict the concept of information to only one subset of
> its potential applications. But to work with this breadth
> of usage we need to recognize that 'information' can refer
> to intrinsic statistical properties of a physical medium,
> extrinsic referential properties of that medium (i.e.
> content), and the significance or use value of that
> content, depending on the context. A problem arises when
> we demand that only one of these uses should be given
> legitimacy. As I have repeatedly suggested on this
> listserve, it will be a source of constant useless
> argument to make the assertion that someone is wrong in
> their understanding of information if they use it in one
> of these non-formal ways. But to fail to mark which
> conception of information is being considered, or worse,
> to use equivocal conceptions of the term in the same
> argument, will ultimately undermine our efforts to
> understand one another and develop a complete general
> theory of information.
>
> This nominalization of 'inform' has been in use for
> hundreds of years in legal and literary contexts, in all
> of these variant forms. But there has been a slowly
> increasing tendency to use it to refer to the
> information-beqaring medium itself, in substantial terms.
> This reached its greatest extreme with the restricted
> technical usage formalized by Claude Shannon. Remember,
> however, that this was only introduced a little over a
> half century ago. When one of his mentors (Hartley)
> initially introduced a logarithmic measure of signal
> capacity he called it 'intelligence' — as in the gathering
> of intelligence by a spy organization. So had Shannon
> chose to stay with that usage the confusions could have
> been worse (think about how confusing it would have been
> to talk about the entropy of intelligence). Even so,
> Shannon himself was to later caution against assuming that
> his use of the term 'information' applied beyond its
> technical domain.
>
> So despite the precision and breadth of appliction that
> was achieved by setting aside the extrinsic relational
> features that characterize the more colloquial uses of the
> term, this does not mean that these other uses are in some
> sense non-scientific. And I am not alone in the belief
> that these non-intrinsic properties can also (eventually)
> be strictly formalized and thereby contribute insights to
> such technical fields as molecular biology and cognitive
> neuroscience.
>
> As a result I think that it is legitimate to argue that
> information (in the referential sense) is only in use
> among living forms, that an alert signal sent by the
> computer in an automobile engine is information (in both
> senses, depending on whether we include a human
> interpreter in the loop), or that information (in the
> intrinsic sense of a medium property) is lost within a
> black hole or that it can be used to provide a more
> precise conceptiont of physical cause (as in Collier's
> sense). These different uses aren't unrelated to each
> other. They are just asymmetrically dependent on one
> another, such that medium-intrinsic properties can be
> investigated without considering referential properties,
> but not vice versa.
>
> It's time we move beyond terminological chauvenism so that
> we can further our dialogue about the entire domain in
> which the concept of information is important. To succeed
> at this, we only need to be clear about which conception
> of information we are using in any given context.
>
> — Terry
>
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 8:32 PM, John
> Collier<Collierj at ukzn.ac.za
> <mailto:Collierj at ukzn.ac.za>>wrote:
>
> I wrote a paper some time ago arguing that causal
> processes are the transfer of information. Therefore I
> think that physical processes can and do convey
> information. Cause can be dispensed with.
>
> * There is a copy atCausation is the Transfer of
> Information
> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.ncf.ca%2Fcollier%2Fpapers%2Fcausinf.pdf&data=01%7C01%7Choelzer%40unr.edu%7C2cfdcd34699449bb000c08d47629a4c0%7C523b4bfc0ebd4c03b2b96f6a17fd31d8%7C1&sdata=y5LYga7SnUhkgN8ZBtkSTW6%2F0PqRFrwvXXO%2FvMYdl%2Fc%3D&reserved=0>In
> Howard Sankey (ed)/Causation, Natural Laws and
> Explanation/(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999)
>
> Information is a very powerful concept. It is a shame
> to restrict oneself to only a part of its possible
> applications.
>
> John Collier
>
> Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
>
> Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.ncf.ca%2Fcollier&data=01%7C01%7Choelzer%40unr.edu%7C2cfdcd34699449bb000c08d47629a4c0%7C523b4bfc0ebd4c03b2b96f6a17fd31d8%7C1&sdata=%2Btv6lCO6ofLs245tO0VmMZlu%2Fw2GKrNEzbE8jZ%2F6DyA%3D&reserved=0>
>
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>
>
> --
>
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
>
>
>
> --
>
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
>
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--
-------------------------------------------------
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/
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