[Fis] Fwd: Re[2]: Heretic

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FIS Colleagues,

There is no problem with heretics in this list. They are very welcome as 
they make us think on our favorite ideas in a different way or even from 
an opposed angle. We must always maintain the scholarly tone, that's the 
only condition! (well, apart from the "two messages per week" sacred 
rule)... From the many --exciting-- recent exchanges, let me pick from 
Lars: /"assuming that Information is a property, an entity is not 
necessary. We can proceed with scientific research, using any 
information concept we think useful, without assuming it refers to 
anything."/ Something similar but perhaps less clearly formulated was in 
my proposal of the indefinability of information and the reference to 
notions such as "propagating influence" and "distinction on the adjacent."

Therefore I friendly disagree with Yixin below: /"//the definition of 
information is the real foundation of information science//"/, although 
I acknowledge the value and interest of his whole approach from the 
background of formal/computational approaches to our problem/field. 
Somehow, defining information universally is like looking for the "red 
herring", but it doesn't mean that we must condemn the term to 
obscurity. We can develop the foundations of information science without 
that definition, and indeed the advancement during last ten years has 
been promising.

My personal strategy, beyond the 10 public points I formulated, consists 
on theoretical/empirical work about "informational entities". Those 
entities, the existence of which depends on a special relationship with 
the environment, are able to continuously distinguish - say - energy 
flows from information flows, intertwining both kinds of flows with 
their own survival and maintenance processes. An excellent parallel can 
be made with Harold Morowitz on the energy flow and Geoffrey West on 
scaling entities. The former for the micro-perspective (& ecological 
perspective) and the latter for the macro-perspective on the 
organizational dynamics of cells, organisms, enterprises, cities...

The closest realm we can consider, and acknowledge almost completely at 
the molecular scale, is the living cell. That's the most strategic 
theater where we can define a series of essential concepts: first the 
information flow, then the signaling system, the life cycle, the 
cell-cell communication, the complexity growth, etc. etc. This was the 
origins of the genuine existential openness to tiny informational 
signals from the environment. I bet that there is something fundamental 
to learn about this bio-informational way of existence that can be 
usefully carried on to physical quarters and also to the social. There 
is a common informational philosophy of organization, e.g. reminding 
Joseph Brenner's LIR, that at the time being we don't recognize 
basically for two reasons: first the dogmas around the reductionist 
physical approach (the imperialism of physics), and second the relative 
poverty  of theoretical biology (the Darwinian organizational 
blindness)... Anyhow , in a few weeks I will publish a rather complete 
description of the prokaryotic information flow. I hope it will 
stimulate reflections from other FIS parties. As I have often cited 
Michael Conrad in this list: /"when we look at a biological system, we 
are looking at the face of the underlying physics of the universe"./

Best--Pedro


El 05/10/2017 a las 12:03, 钟义信 escribió:
> Dear friends,
>
> The debate on the definition of information is of significance because 
> the definition of information is the real foundation of information 
> science. It is noticed that many contravercies in information science 
> either in the past or at present time are more or less related to the 
> different understandings of the concept of information.
>
> It is not difficult to accept that there are two concepts of 
> information, related and also different to each other. The first one 
> is the information presented by the objects existed in 
> environment_before the subject's perceiving_ and the second one is the 
> information _perceived and understood by the subject._ The first one 
> can be termed the object information and the second one the perceived 
> information. The latter is perceived by the subject from the former.
>
> The object information is just the object's "state of the object and 
> the pattern with which the state varyies". _No meaning and no utility 
> at the stage_.
>
> The perceived information is the information, perceive by the subject 
> from the object information. So, it should have the form component of 
> the object (syntactic information), the meaning component of the 
> object (semantic information), and the utility component of the object 
> with respect to the subject's goal (pragmatic information). _Only at 
> this stage, the "meaning" comes out_.
>
> What is new, we discovered that the meaning (semantic information) is 
> the 'function' of the union of the syntactic information and the 
> pragmatic information. This can be understood as the definition of the 
> meaning/semantic information and the relation among them. In othr 
> words, "meaning (semantic information)" cannot be understood arbitrarily.
>
> Comments are welcome.
>
> --
>
> Prof. Y. X. Zhong （钟义信）
>
> Center for Intelligence Science Research
>
> University of Posts & Telecommunications
>
> Beijing 100876, China
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- 回复邮件 -----
> *发信人:*Lars-Göran Johansson<Lars-Goran.Johansson at filosofi.uu.se>
> *收信人:*foundationsofinformationscienceinformationscience 
> <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *时间:*2017年10月05日 16时45分39秒
> *主题:*Re: [Fis] Fwd: Re[2]: Heretic
>
>
>     Dear all
>     It seems to me that the heat in the debate about the definition of
>     the concept of Information is fuelled by deep metaphysical
>     feelings: different people have different views about what is
>     REALLY Information. Metaphysical debates can never be resolved.
>     May I suggest that we agree on this: there are several different
>     concepts, such as Shannon Information, Semantic Information, etc..
>     Each Information concept has its own distinct definition and each
>     one may use whichever he/she finds useful.
>
>     Whether any of these concepts refers to any real thing,
>     INFORMATION, cannot be determined by any empirical research. The
>     reason is that empirical research can sometimes decide the truth
>     of a sentence, but never whether the predicate in that sentence
>     refers to anything.
>     Suppose we have found, empirically, that a sentence of the form ’
>     X is information’ where ’information’ has a clear definition.
>     (Chose anyone you like.) The truth of this sentence entails that
>     the object referred to by ’X’ must exist; this is a truth
>     condition for any declarative sentence. But it does not follow
>     that the predicate ’Information' refers to something. It suffice
>     that the object X belongs to the extension of the predicate. This
>     is the nominalist position.
>     Since 1000 years the core debate in metaphysics has been whether
>     there are universals, i.e., properties and relations. The debate
>     about/Information/ is a debate about the existence of a property.
>     I am an empiricist and nominalist, accepting Occam’s razor: one
>     should not assume more entities than necessary. And assuming that
>     Information is a property, an entithy, is not necessary. We can
>     proceed with scientific research, using any information concept we
>     think useful, without assuming it refers to anything. Metaphysical
>     issues can safely be put to rest.
>
>     Lars-Göran Johansson
>

-- 
-------------------------------------------------
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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