[Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on the cateogry theory
Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
javierweiss at gmail.com
Wed Feb 14 14:35:28 CET 2018
Dear Sungchul,
Dear FISers,
1. I think that not every communication process involves coding/decoding
and meaning, so they could not be simply paralelled to language. Terry and
Guy are both right on this point, though as pointed out by Guy I would not
define communication as information transfer. A proper way to
describe/understand communication is as an emergent anticipatory system
(what means that we are talking about complex systems that temporalize its
own complexity as a complexity-reduction strategy). For instance, there is
no coding/decoding process when I communicate to my dog. It does not
understand my speaking, and I do not understand its barking. Yet still both
of us interact, building an anticipative structure where both of us learn
what to expect from the other. Once the initial double contingency is left
behind, communication has emerged. It is only then, on this emergence
level, where information appears as the difference between selection and
redundancy. The more complex the system is, the more bits of information it
is able to process, the more possible states of the system. There is no
information "traveling" from one place to another, from sender to receiver.
The system itself becomes the medium of information production and
processing.
2. In the cases where communication processes do involve coding/decoding,
we would be talking about the differentiation of communication media in the
context of an anticipatory system. Communication media increase the
complexity of the system because they produce information on their own;
information that can only be such in the context of the media that
generates it. Coding attains to information and meaning production.
Transmission, I believe, is a quite singular technological development. It
implies using the noise of the environment as a medium to transmit signals.
For instance, the patterns of the radio waves are used to code signals; the
patterns of quantum particles are also being used to code signals. So, the
organized and patterned complexity of a noisy medium is employed to
physically deliver signals. The success of this technology has made of it a
primordial model for our theories of communication and information. Still,
I think it is only a singular case.
2.1. Referring to language and isomorphic communication media, I would
argue that it could be suitable to transcend the dicotomy between binarism
and triadism. Describing language from the standpoint of Spencer Brown`s
jargon, E. Esposito characterizes language as a two-sided form. I think
this hypothesis is worth exploring. Every triad can in fact be binarised.
So, I do not think triads are irreducible. For instance, you have
distinguished between coding/decoding and information flow. The thing is
that here you are leaving an state unmarked. The first distinction
disntinguishes between indication and distinction (sender/receiver;
sign/interpretation, and so on). Then you refer to the information flow,
that is, you are underlining the self-referentiality of the process. But
you are leaving outside the external reference. Communication is always
communication about something. External reference is always present.
Accordingly, we are dealing with two distinctions (indication/distinction
and self-reference/external reference) that are related to each other
orthogonally -as Luhmann following Maturana liked to say. Maybe, we could
even talk of "transjunction" following Gotthard Günther (What would you
say, Mark?)
Best,
Reference:
Elena Esposito (1999), "Two-sided forms in language". En D. Baecker,*Problems
of Form*. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 78-98.
Hi Howard, FISers,
I enjoyed reading the informative excerpt from your book.
(*I*) Regarding the definition of information you give, it seems to me that
your defintiion is of the dyadic type:
"A is B."
(1)
which can be represeneted diagramatically as
A -----> B
(2)
I would prefer a triadic definition of the type shown below:
"A determines B which in turn determines C such that C is
indirectly determined by A" (3)
which I often represent diagramatically as follows:
f g
A ------> B --------> C
(4)
| ^
| |
|_______________|
h
f =encoding, sign generation; g = decoding. interpreting, translating; h =
informaiton flow, grounding, correspondence, or correlation
Diagram (4) was adopted from C. W. Peirce (1839-1914) who first proposed
a triadic deinitiion of the sign:
*66 - MS 793 - [On Signs] .*
A Sign is an thing, A, which
(1) in addition to others characters of its own,
(2) stands in a dyadic relation Þ to a purely active correlate, B, and is
also
(3) in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate, C, this
triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a relation, µ, to B,
the relation µ corresponding in a recognized way to the relation Þ, its
dyadic relation to A would belong to it just the same even if A did not
exist.
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM
(*II*) Regarding the role of entropy in information processes (including
translation), it is important to remember that most (if not
all) translators of information are non-isolated systems so that their
entropy need not increase with time (as widely thought) and, in fact, can
decrese if they can dissipative free energy. What the second law of
thermodynamics says is that the entropy of ISOLATED SYSTESMS increases with
time. In other words,
"What drives the spontaneous processes in isolated systems (e.g., the Big
Bang) is entropy increase. But (5)
what drives the spontaneous processes in non-isolated systems (e.g., the
biosphere) is free energy decrease."
Let us remember that entropy (S) is a variable of the free energy fucntion,
as exemplified by Gibbs free energy (G):
G = E + PV - TS
(6)
Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
All the best.
Sung
------------------------------
*From:* Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Howard Bloom <
howlbloom at aol.com>
*Sent:* Tuesday, February 13, 2018 12:56:26 AM
*To:* yxs at pku.edu.cn; fis at listas.unizar.es
*Cc:* crystal.rosa at howardbloom.net; javierweiss at gmail.com
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based
on the cateogry theory
Xueshan,
a huge thanks for your contribution to this dialog. here's mine
"information is anything a receiver can interpret." information is in the
eye of the beholder.
for more, see my book The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates.
here's a sample:
If meaning is anything that a translator can understand, anything that a
translator can interpret, anything that a translator can decode, then the
amount of meaning in this cosmos is constantly increasing. Meaning defies
the law of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Meaning does not ebb
away. It is not erased by disorder. It is on the rise. It is constantly
piling up. And its pile is reaching toward the heavens. Not to mention
pouring from the skies.
Let's take a simple example—starlight. This planet, Mother Earth, pulled
itself together from random pebbles, iceballs, and supersized gravity balls
4.5 billion years ago. For the first billion years of Earth's existence,
streams of photons from emitters far, far away, rays of light from distant
stars, rays of light that looked like pin pricks in the black of the
night sky, hit the surface of this Earth's stone and water, its land and
seas. And those beams of light found no takers. They found no receivers,
no interpreters, no translators. Planet Earth’s stone and water were
indifferent to the existence of light from stars. They were literally not
moved by starlight. The result? Starlight had no meaning.
Were these trickles of light from stars information yet? No. Not by the
standard of "information is anything decoded by a receiver." And not by
the standards of Claude Shannon's "meaning." But things would not stay
that way forever.
Roughly 3.85 billion years ago, life assembled in the shallows and in the
depths of the seas. And roughly three hundred and fifty thousand years
into life's existence, cells of life stuff first registered the existence
of light. The life forms that pulled off this trick were cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria were single-celled creatures that live in societies of
trillions. And cyanobacteria did more than merely register light's
presence or absence. They acted on what they “saw.” They used light as a
power source. They used light to manufacture food. And they used light to
make copies of themselves. They used light to multiply. They used light
to conquer the newborn Earth’s rivers, lakes, and seas.[i]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn1> How? They invented photosynthesis. They
invented an industrial process, a process of manic mass production, that
turned light into polypeptides, sugars, hydrocarbons, and proteins. A
process of translation. Translation from one medium to another. A
process of motion. Electron-and-atom motion. Highly orchestrated motion.
An extraordinarily sophisticated response to a stimulus.
Back to our question. Was light information yet? Yes. Translators were
decoding it. Translators were interpreting it. Translators were
transforming it into energy conveyors like ATP (adenosine triphosphate)[ii]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn2> and social signalling molecules like
N-acyl-homoserine lactones and cyclic oligopeptides.[iii]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn3> Turning light into a new language. A
language of chemical sentences. What’s more, translators were grabbing hold
of light as a stimulus. And they were responding to it with action. With
metabolism. With movement. With migration to new territories. Was light
information yet? You bet. Why? Because translators had invented a
meaning. A meaning for the light of the Sun.
OK, that was true of sunlight. But what about starlight? Sorry. It was
too weak to register. It still had no translators. No interpreters. So
was starlight information yet? No.
Was starlight destined to be an informational orphan forever? Was it
condemned to go unto eternity without meaning? Or, to put it differently,
would starlight’s lack of eager translators ever change?
Over three billion years later, there were light translators all over this
planet. Not just in the sea. They had also conquered the land. They were
plants. And their ability to coat the planet with light-translators—with
the solar panels we call leaves—was astonishing. Did this spread of
plants, this astonishing increase in the number of translators, increase
the amount of meaning “in” sunlight? Had rainforests and ocean kelp
increased the number of implicit properties that the cosmos extracts from
sunlight? Had they increased the translation of light from one medium to
another? Or, to put it differently, had coating the land and lining the
seas with photosynthesizers increased the amount of Shannon's style of
information? Had it increased the raw total of response to the stimulus
of sunlight? Again, the answer is yes. Absolutely.
But what about starlight? Still no takers. So was starlight information
yet? Not so far as we know.
Let's skip ahead another 999 million years or so. Let’s fast forward to
humans. Roughly 36,000 years ago,[iv] <#m_389580683919917809_x__edn4>
humans invented a simple isomorphic symbol set, a system of notation. And
they carved their notes in mammoth, baboon, and eagle bones.[v]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn5> What did they keep notes about? What did
the symbols try to capture? What did they try to translate? To what were
they isomorphic? The phases of the moon.[vi]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn6> The repetition roughly every thirty days
of a cycle that sees the moon transform from a fingernail-like sliver, a
thin crescent, to a fat and full circle of light. These early *Homo
sapiens* apparently used their carved bones and tusks to keep track of
something that they were in the process of inventing, the concept of time.
So moonlight now had translators and interpreters. Was moonlight
information yet? You bet. Moonlight had meaning extractors. It had
creatures that responded to its changes. It had stimulus, response, and
meaning. Did that make it information? I leave the answer up to you.
But what about starlight? It appears that we humans didn’t make sense of
the random spray of stars in the black of night until well after the
invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Then in roughly 4,000 B.C.E.,
the Babylonians got into the act and pioneered star-based mythology,
star-based astronomy and astrology. Two thousand years later the
inhabitants of Britain and Scotland built hundreds of groupings of massive
boulders like Stonehenge and apparently used those boulder circles to
translate alignments of the Sun, the moon, and the stars into a
language whose letters were fashioned from stone.[vii]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn7> And across the Atlantic Ocean, the Aztecs,
Incas and Mayans, too, translated the connect-the-dots of the stars into
stone, into ritual, and into the synchronized behavior of citizens far and
wide.[viii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__edn8>
Which brings us back to the basic question. The amount of sunlight has
gone up twenty six percent since life first evolved.[ix]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn9> And old stars have died and new ones been
born in the night sky. But is that what has jacked up the amount of
information on this earthly ball? Not a bit. But has the information
content on this planet grown? Has the meaning increased? Have the number
and variety of responses to light's stimulus gone up? Have the number of
breakthroughs that light inspired soared? Have the number of
inventions that light triggered climbed? You bet.
So in the days of the henge-makers, was the cosmos following the second law
of thermodynamics? Was the universe demonstrating entropy? Was
information sliding down a slippery slope to disorder? Not one bit.
Claude Shannon’s style of information may or may not have been on the
increase. But meaning was rocketing.
Then in the land between the two rivers, in Mesopotamia, came tribes, city
states, and empires. With full-time star priests, full-time scribes who
thought that they could read the secrets of the universe and the secrets of
their politicians’ futures in the stars. For one hundred generations—for
roughly 2,000 years[x] <#m_389580683919917809_x__edn10>—these astronomers
and astrologers watched the stars for the kings of Mesopotamia, the kings
of the thirty one cities of The Land of the Lords of Brightness. For one
hundred generations the professional star translators made meticulous
observations, translated what they saw into the symbol set of cuneiform,
recorded those cuneiform translations on clay hand tablets, and deposited
the tablets in libraries of as many as twenty thousand clay tablets[xi]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn11> each in the palaces of kings. Today there
are over 1.5 million cuneiform tablets in museums around the world.[xii]
<#m_389580683919917809_x__edn12> Needless to say, not all of them concern
astronomy. But all are translations of experience into isomorphic symbol
sets.
How very much like cyanobacteria translating sunlight into a language of
biochemicals. How very much like leaves translating sunlight into panels,
sheets, threads, and stems of cells.
The Mesopotamian priestly tablets recorded the movements of the
constellations and the stars. But that wasn’t all. The Mesopotamian
scribe priests built one layer of symbol set upon another. The scribe
priests invented three new symbol sets—written language, mathematical
procedures, and charts. Why? To understand the “messages” of starlight.
And they used those “messages” to read the minds of the gods. What’s
more, they advised that rulers act according to the stars’ “messages.”
Had the amount of starlight making it to the surface of the Earth gone up?
Not a single iota. But had the amount of information shot up? Had the
number of meanings and the number of creatures paying attention to those
meanings skyrocketed? Had *responses* to the tiny bits of light from the
stars been fruitful and multiplied? Even in Claude Shannon’s crippled
terminology, the amount of meaning had soared.
Meanwhile, Babylon’s star priests were just starting starlight’s
informational odyssey. Today there are hundreds of thousands of
professional and amateur telescopes pointing at the heavens, and all of
them are trying to find yet more meanings in starlight. We've used our
telescopes to see that some dots in the black heavens of night, dots that
we originally thought were stars, are sky-swirls, tiny spirals in the
sky. We've had the “Great Debate” of April 26, 1920 between Heber Curtis
and Harlow Shapley at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.,
[xiii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__edn13> a debate over whether those sky
twirls are mere spirals of gas inside our Milky Way, inside our star
cluster, or whether they are swirls of something far more substantial than
gas, whether they are swirls of stars. We've had The Great Debate over
whether those swirls are inside our star cluster, our "globular cluster,"
or outside of it. We've had the debate over whether our globular star
cluster is a spiral like those strange spiral wisps. We've had the debate
about whether our globular cluster is a tiny 30,000 light years across or a
giant 300,000. We've had the great debate between Curtis and Shapley over
whether this is a nice, cozy universe that includes only our star cluster
or whether the cosmos is an unimaginably vast space in which "island
universes" like ours, things called "galaxies," exist at great distances
from each other, huge, lonely, unimaginable distances. We’ve seen a winner
to that debate—the argument for many galaxies spread over unimaginable
distances.
We’ve used lenses and mirrors to magnify starlight. We’ve used drawings on
paper and images on glass photographic plates and on cellulose film to
capture the images of stars and to record their positions. We’ve turned
that data into electron flows, into Claude Shannon’s pluses and minuses,
ons and offs, one and zeros, into binary numbers and into Shannon’s
brilliant language of electronic circuits—the language of computers. We’ve
stored these translations of starlight on magnetic film and hard drives.
And we've used starlight, the streams of photons from the stars, to
theorize about the origins of the universe and about the universe's
future. Our libraries of scholarly articles and popular books about
starlight-interpretation, starlight-translation, have grown huge. So have
the numbers of cosmologists, astrophysicists, and astronomers who’ve
dedicated their lives to interpreting that trickle of light from the
stars. What’s more, we owe everything from Newton's physics and Einstein's
relativity to NASA's space explorations to starlight. Has the amount of
starlight falling on this planet at night increased? Not a sliver. Not a
scratch. So what has gone up? The quantity of interpretation. The
quantity of translation. The quantity of response to a stimulus. The
quantity of action. The quantity of repetition in a new context. The
quantity of raw glass, iron, steel, and money dedicated to starlight. And
most important, the quantity of meaning.
What does this radical increase mean for the quantity of information "in"
starlight? What does it mean for the total amount of information and
meaning on this third gravity ball from the Sun? And what does it mean for
the total amount of information—the total amount of meaning—in the cosmos?
If information is anything a receiver can interpret, anything a translator
can translate, has the amount of information gone up? Or is this merely an
explosion of meaning? It's a semantic quibble. A quibble you can decide
better than I can. But something has been on the increase. Something has
shot up dramatically. Something complex. Something extremely social.
Something profoundly conversational. Something that utterly defies the
pessimistic predictions of entropy. And something that seriously
challenges an information theory without meaning.
------------------------------
[i] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref1> J. William Schopf & Cornelius
Klein, *The
Proterozoic Biosphere: A Multidisciplinary Study* (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 360.
[ii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref2> Rafael Palacios, William Edward
Newton,* Genomes and genomics of nitrogen-fixing organisms* (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2005), p. 41.
[iii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref3> Reinhard Krämer, Kirsten Jung,
eds., *Bacterial Signaling* (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2010), pp. 7, 23-24.
[iv] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref4> Paul G. Bahn, Jean Vertut, *Journey
Through the Ice Age* (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1997), p.
31. Bryan E. Penprase, *The Power of Stars: How Celestial Observations Have
Shaped Civilization* (New York: Springer, 2011), p. 134.
[v] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref5> Peter James, Nick Thorpe, *Ancient
Inventions* (New York: Ballantine, 1994), p. 485. Evan Hadingham, * Early
Man and the Cosmos* (New York: Walker, 1985), pp. 85-88.
[vi] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref6> Alexander Marshack, *The roots of
civilization: the cognitive beginnings of man's first art, symbol and
notation* (Kingston, RI: Moyer Bell, 1991). David H. Kelley, Eugene F.
Milone, Anthony F. Aven, *Exploring Ancient Skies: A Survey of Ancient and
Cultural Astronomy* (New York: Springer, 2004), pp. 157-158. Paul G. Bahn,
ed, *An Enquiring Mind: Studies in Honor of Alexander Marshack* (Oxford:
Oxbow, 2009).
[vii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref7> A. Thom, “Megalithic astronomy:
Indications in standing stones, *Vistas in Astronomy*, Volume 7, 1966, pp.
1-56. Clive Ruggles, “The stone alignments of Argyll and Mull: a
perspective on the statistical approach in archaeoastronomy,” in Clive
Ruggles, ed., *Records in Stone: Papers in Memory of Alexander Thom*
(Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 233.
[viii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref8> Penprase, *The Power of Stars*,
pp. 11, 68, 71, 74-6, 91-92, 123-124.
[ix] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref9> Kenneth R. Lang, *The Sun** From
Space *(Berlin: Springer, 2009), p. 385.
[x] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref10> J. Edward Wright, *The early
history** of heaven* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 31.
[xi] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref11> Lorna Oakes, *Mesopotamia* (New
York: Rosen, 2009), p. 54.
[xii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref12> Dr. Tonia Sharlach, “Taxes in
Ancient Mesopotamia,” *The University of Pennsylvania Almanac*, April 2,
2002
http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v48/n28/AncientTaxes.html#meso
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.upenn.edu%2Falmanac%2Fv48%2Fn28%2FAncientTaxes.html%23meso&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=cqrEkAO%2BbatZQycqXZSwb8tRAue4%2B1zY%2F45hdQrg8Sw%3D&reserved=0>
(accessed June 28, 2011). Louise Roug, "Cuneiform bits become
history bytes," * Los Angeles Times*, May 27, 2003,
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/27/entertainment/et-roug27
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Farticles.latimes.com%2F2003%2Fmay%2F27%2Fentertainment%2Fet-roug27&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=opr4hTl6b3n4nc6ob%2B2PUyYeW%2FF8oprCZCGIs0GMsPQ%3D&reserved=0>
(accessed October 12, 2011).
[xiii] <#m_389580683919917809_x__ednref13> Robert W. Smith, *The Expanding
Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900-1931* (Cambridge UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
Howard Bloom
Howardbloom.net
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously
enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates("Bloom's argument will rock
your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!”
Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code (“A terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam.”
David Swindle, PJ Media).
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project. Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee. Board Member and Member Of Board Of Governors, National
Space Society. Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society. Founding
Board Member, The Darwin Project.
-----Original Message-----
From: Xueshan Yan <yxs at pku.edu.cn>
To: FIS Group <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Cc: 'Jose Javier Blanco Rivero' <javierweiss at gmail.com>
Sent: Mon, Feb 12, 2018 6:33 am
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on
the cateogry theory
Dear Javier and Dear Stan,
Javier:
1. I very much agree with you as follows:
“I think that only signals can be transmitted, not information. Information
can only be gained by an observer (a self-referential system) that draws a
distinction.”
A Chinese scholar Dongsheng Miao’s argument is: There is no information can
exists without carrier, i.e. No naked can exists.
I think both of you two are expressing a principle of information science.
2. According to Linguistics, the relationship between language and
communication is:
Language is a tool of communication about information.
Of course, this is only limited to the human atmosphere. So I think that
all (Human) Semiotics ((Human) Linguistics), (Human) Communication Study
should be the subdisciplines of Human Informatics.
==========================================================
Dear Xueshan,
Thanks for sharing your interesting remarks and references. I think no one
really wants to deny the crucial role the language metaphor has played in
the thinking of communication and information models. But I believe the
crucial point is to distinguish between language and communication.
Language is for us humans the main communication medium, though not the
only one. We tend to describe other communication media in society and
nature by mapping the language-like characteristics they have. This has
been useful and sucessful so far. But pushing the language metaphor too far
is showing its analytical limits. I think we need to think of a
transdisciplinary theory of communication media. On the other hand, I agree
with you that we need to check the uses of the concepts of signal and
information. I think that only signals can be transmitted, not information.
Information can only be gained by an observer (a self-referential system)
that draws a distinction.
Best,
Javier
==============================================
Stan:
According to Peirce, language is only one of the systematic signs. Here we
consider sign, signal, symbol as the same thing. So, more precisely in my
opinion:
{signal {information}}, or {substrate {signal {information}}}
But not
{language {signal {information}}}
If you remember, in our previous discussions, I much appreciate the
The hierarchy idea is very important to our study which is initially
introduced by Pedro, Nikhil and you.
===============================================================
Xueshan -- I think one can condense some of your insights hierarchically,
as:
In a system having language, information seemingly may be obtained in other
ways as well. It would be a conceptually broader category. Thus (using the
compositional hierarchy):
[information [language [signal]]]
Meaning that, when a system has language, all information will be
understood or construed by way of linguistic constructs.
(Here I am using ‘signal’ as being more specific than Peirce’s ‘sign’,
where:
[sign [information [...]]] )
Then, more dynamically (using the subsumptive hierarchy):
{language {signal {information}}}
Information in a languaged system is derived by way linguistic formations,
so that, even though it is an extremely broad category, information
(informing) only emerges by way of linguistically informed transformations.
STAN
Best wishes to all,
Xueshan
===============================================================
El feb 10, 2018 5:23 AM, "Xueshan Yan" <yxs at pku.edu.cn> escribió:
Dear Colleagues,
I have read the article "The languages of bacteria" which Gordana
recommended, and has gained a lot of inspiration from it. In combination
with Sung's comparative linguistics exploration on cell language and human
language, I have the following learning feelings to share with everyone:
In this article, the author recognized that bacteria have evolved multiple
languages for communicating within and between species. Intra- and
interspecies cell-cell communication allows bacteria to coordinate various
biological activities in order to behave like multicellular organisms. Such
as AI-2, it is a general language that bacteria use for intergenera
signaling.
I found an interesting phenomenon in this paper: the author use the concept
*information* 3 times but the concept *signal* (signal or signaling) 55
times, so we have to review the history and application of “information”
and “signal” in biology and biochemistry, it is helpful for us to
understand the relationship between language, signal, and information.
The origin of the concept of signal (main the signal transduction) can be
traced back to the end of the 1970s. But until 1980, biochemist and
endocrinologist Martin Rodbell published an article titled: “The Role of
Hormone Receptors and GTP-Regulatory Proteins in Membrane
Transduction" in *Nature,
*in this paper he used the "signal transduction" first time. Since then,
the research on signal transduction is popular in biology and biochemistry.
As for any information transmission system, if we pay more attention to its
transmission carrier instead of its transmission content, we are used to
employing "signal transmission" instead of "signal transduction". From the
tradition of the early use of information concept, the signal transduction
study of cells is only equivalent to the level of telecommunications before
1948. Outwardly, before the advent of Shannon's information theory, the
central issue of telecommunications is "signal" rather than "information".
After that, the central issue of telecommunications is "information" rather
than "signal".
According to the application history of information concept, nearly all the
essential problems behind the concepts of communication, messenger, signal
and so on may be information problems. Just as the language problem what we
are discussing here, our ultimate goal is to analyze the information.
For the same reason, I recommend another two papers:
1. Do Plants Think? (June 5, 2012, *Scientific American*)
(
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle%2Fdo-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz%2F%23rd%3Fsukey%3Dfc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=sjMaL0T%2BN3KelB8f5NoBPusXMIPszIAA4bUlLcfQE0U%3D&reserved=0>
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-
daniel-chamovitz/#rd?sukey=fc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931
e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle%2Fdo-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz%2F%23rd%3Fsukey%3Dfc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=sjMaL0T%2BN3KelB8f5NoBPusXMIPszIAA4bUlLcfQE0U%3D&reserved=0>
）
2. Plants Can Think, Feel and Learn (December 3, 2014, *New Scientist*)
(
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fmg22429980-400-root-intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=hbtSeKAvx4zsL0e77t%2FM14QU7UbxDrIKbr%2Fv%2BqapVJM%3D&reserved=0>
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429980-400-root-
intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fmg22429980-400-root-intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn&data=02%7C01%7Csji%40pharmacy.rutgers.edu%7Cb88de82245994dfca88c08d572a69927%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C1%7C636540982287359387&sdata=hbtSeKAvx4zsL0e77t%2FM14QU7UbxDrIKbr%2Fv%2BqapVJM%3D&reserved=0>
)
>From which we can judge whether or not a plants informatics can exists.
Best wishes,
Xueshan
*From:* fis- <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>bounces at listas.unizar.es [mailto:
fis- <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On
Behalf Of *Sungchul
Ji
*Sent:* Thursday, February 8, 2018 9:10 PM
*To:* Francesco Rizzo < <13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>
13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>; Terrence W. DEACON < <deacon at berkeley.edu>
deacon at berkeley.edu>
*Cc:* Fis, < <fis at listas.unizar.es>fis at listas.unizar.es>
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based
on the cateogry theory
Hi Terry, and FISers,
Can it be that "language metaphor" is akin to a (theoretical) knife that,
in the hands of a surgeon, can save lives but, in a wrong hand, can kill?
All the best.
Sung
------------------------------
*From:* Francesco Rizzo < <13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>
13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>
*Sent:* Thursday, February 8, 2018 2:56:11 AM
*To:* Terrence W. DEACON
*Cc:* Fis,; Sungchul Ji
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based
on the cateogry theory
Caro Terry estensibile a tutti,
è sempre un piacere leggerTi e capirTi. La general theory of information è
preceduta da un sistema (o semiotica) di significazione e seguita da un
sistema (o semiotica ) di comunicazione. Tranne che quando si ha un
processo comunicativo come il passaggio di un Segnale (che non significa
necessariamente 'un segno') da una Fonte, attraverso un Trasmettitore,
lungo un Canale, a un Destinatario. In un processo tra macchina e macchina
il segnale non ha alcun potere 'significante'. In tal caso non si ha
significazione anche se si può dire che si ha passaggio di informazione.
Quando il destinatario è un essere umano (e non è necessario che la fonte
sia anch'essa un essere umano) si è in presenza di un processo di
significazione. Un sistema di significazione è una costruzione semiotica
autonoma, indipendente da ogni possibile atto di comunicazione che
l'attualizzi. Invece ogni processo di comunicazione tra esseri umani -- o
tra ogni tipo di apparato o struttura 'intelligente, sia meccanico che
biologico, -- presuppone un sistema di significazione come propria o
specifica condizione. In conclusione, è possibile avere una semiotica della
significazione indipendente da una semiotica della comunicazione; ma è
impossibile stabilire una semiotica della comunicazione indipendente da una
semiotica della significazione.
Ho appreso molto da Umberto Eco a cui ho dedicato il capitolo 10. Umberto
Eco e il processo di re-interpretazione e re-incantamento della scienza
economica (pp. 175-217) di "Valore e valutazioni. La scienza dell'economia
o l'economia della scienza" (FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1997). Nello mio stesso
libro si trovano:
- il capitolo 15. Semiotica economico-estimativa (pp. 327-361) che si
colloca nel quadro di una teoria globale di tutti i sistemi di
significazione e i processi di comunicazione;
- il sottoparagrafo 5.3.3 La psicologia genetica di Jean Piaget e la
neurobiologia di Humberto Maturana e Francesco Varela. una nuova
epistemologia sperimentale della qualità e dell'unicità (pp. 120-130).
Chiedo scusa a Tutti se Vi ho stancati o se ancora una volta il mio
scrivere in lingua italiana Vi crea qualche problema. Penso che il dono che
mi fate è, a proposito della QUALITA' e dell'UNICITA', molto più grande
del (per)dono che Vi chiedo. Grazie.
Un saluto affettuoso.
Francecso
2018-02-07 23:02 GMT+01:00 Terrence W. DEACON <deacon at berkeley.edu>:
Dear FISers,
In previous posts I have disparaged using language as the base model for
building a general theory of information.
Though I realize that this may seem almost heretical, it is not a claim
that all those who use linguistic analogies are wrong, only that it can be
causally misleading.
I came to this view decades back in my research into the neurology and
evolution of the human language capacity.
And it became an orgnizing theme in my 1997 book The Symbolic Species.
Early in the book I describe what I (and now other evolutionary biologists)
have come to refer to as a "porcupine fallacy" in evolutionary thinking.
Though I use it to critique a misleading evolutionary taxonomizing
tendency, I think it also applies to biosemiotic and information theoretic
thinking as well.
So to exemplify my reasoning (with apologies for quoting myself) I append
the following excerpt from the book.
"But there is a serious problem with using language as the model for
analyzing other
species’ communication in hindsight. It leads us to treat every other form
of communication as
exceptions to a rule based on the one most exceptional and divergent case.
No analytic method
could be more perverse. Social communication has been around for as long as
animals have
interacted and reproduced sexually. Vocal communication has been around at
least as long as frogs
have croaked out their mating calls in the night air. Linguistic
communication was an afterthought,
so to speak, a very recent and very idiosyncratic deviation from an ancient
and well-established
mode of communicating. It cannot possibly provide an appropriate model
against which to assess
other forms of communication. It is the rare exception, not the rule, and a
quite anomalous
exception at that. It is a bit like categorizing birds’ wings with respect
to the extent they possess or
lack the characteristics of penguins’ wings, or like analyzing the types of
hair on different mammals
with respect to their degree of resemblance to porcupine quills. It is an
understandable
anthropocentric bias—perhaps if we were penguins or porcupines we might see
more typical wings
and hair as primitive stages compared to our own more advanced
adaptations—but it does more to
obfuscate than clarify. Language is a derived characteristic and so should
be analyzed as an
exception to a more general rule, not vice versa."
Of course there will be analogies to linguistic forms.
This is inevitable, since language emerged from and is supported by a vast
nonlinguistic semiotic infrastructure.
So of course it will inherit much from less elaborated more fundamental
precursors.
And our familiarity with language will naturally lead us to draw insight
from this more familiar realm.
I just worry that it provides an elaborate procrustean model that assumes
what it endeavors to explain.
Regards to all, Terry
On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:04 AM, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero <
javierweiss at gmail.com> wrote:
In principle I agree with Terry. I have been thinking of this, though I am
still not able to make a sound formulation of the idea. Still I am afraid
that if I miss the chance to make at least a brief formulation of it I will
lose the opportunity to make a brainstorming with you. So, here it comes:
I have been thinking that a proper way to distinguish the contexts in which
the concept of information acquires a fixed meaning or the many contexts on
which information can be somehow observed, is to make use of the
distinction between medium and form as developed by N. Luhmann, D. Baecker
and E. Esposito. I have already expressed my opinion in this group that
what information is depends on the system we are talking about. But the
concept of medium is more especific since a complex system ussualy has many
sources and types of information.
So the authors just mentioned, a medium can be broadly defined as a set of
loosely coupled elements. No matter what they are. While a Form is a
temporary fixed coupling of a limited configuration of those elements.
Accordingly, we can be talking about DNA sequences which are selected by
RNA to form proteins or to codify a especific instruction to a determinate
cell. We can think of atoms forming a specific kind of matter and a
specific kind of molecular structure. We can also think of a vocabulary or
a set of linguistic conventions making possible a meaningful utterance or
discourse.
The idea is that the medium conditions what can be treated as information.
Or even better, each type of medium produces information of its own kind.
According to this point of view, information cannot be transmitted. It can
only be produced and "interpreted" out of the specific difference that a
medium begets between itself and the forms that take shape from it. A
medium can only be a source of noise to other mediums. Still, media can
couple among them. This means that media can selforganize in a synergetic
manner, where they depend on each others outputs or complexity reductions.
And this also mean that they do this by translating noise into information.
For instance, language is coupled to writing, and language and writing to
print. Still oral communication is noisy to written communication. Let us
say that the gestures, emotions, entonations, that we make when talking
cannot be copied as such into writing. In a similar way, all the social
practices and habits made by handwriting were distorted by the introduction
of print. From a technical point of view you can codify the same message
orally, by writing and by print. Still information and meaning are not the
same. You can tell your girlfriend you love her. That interaction face to
face where the lovers look into each others eye, where they can see if the
other is nervous, is trembling or whatever. Meaning (declaring love and
what that implies: marriage, children, and so on) and information (he is
being sincere, she can see it in his eye; he brought her to a special
place, so he planned it, and so on) take a very singular and untranslatable
configuration. If you write a letter you just can say "I love you". You
shall write a poem or a love letter. Your beloved would read it alone in
her room and she would have to imagine everything you say. And imagination
makes information and meaning to articulate quite differently as in oral
communication. It is not the same if you buy a love card in the kiosk and
send it to her. Maybe you compensate the simplicity of your message by
adding some chocolates and flowers. Again, information (jumm, lets see what
he bought her) and meaning are not the same. I use examples of social
sciences because that is my research field, although I have the intuition
that it could also work for natural sciences.
Best,
JJ
El feb 7, 2018 10:47 AM, "Sungchul Ji" <sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu> escribió:
Hi FISers,
On 10/8/2017, Terry wrote:
" So basically, I am advocating an effort to broaden our discussions and
recognize that the term information applies in diverse ways to many
different contexts. And because of this it is important to indicate the
framing, whether physical, formal, biological, phenomenological,
linguistic, etc.
. . . . . . The classic syntax-semantics-pragmatics distinction introduced
by Charles Morris has often been cited in this respect, though it too is in
my opinion too limited to the linguistic paradigm, and may be misleading
when applied more broadly. I have suggested a parallel, less linguistic
(and nested in Stan's subsumption sense) way of making the division: i.e.
into intrinsic, referential, and normative analyses/properties of
information."
I agree with Terry's concern about the often overused linguistic metaphor
in defining "information". Although the linguistic metaphor has its
limitations (as all metaphors do), it nevertheless offers a unique
advantage as well, for example, its well-established categories of functions
(see the last column in *Table 1*.)
The main purpose of this post is to suggest that all the varied theories of
information discussed on this list may be viewed as belonging to the same
category of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation) diagrammatically represented
as the 3-node closed network in the first column of *Table 1*.
*Table 1.* The postulated universality of ITR (Irreducible Triadic
Relation) as manifested in information theory, semiotics, cell language
theory, and linguistics.
*Category Theory*
* f g*
* A -----> B ------> C | ^
| | |______________| ** h*
*ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation**)*
*Deacon**’s theory of information*
*Shannon**’s*
*Theory of*
*information*
*Peirce**’s theory of signs*
*Cell language theory*
*Human language (Function)*
A
*Intrinsic *information
Source
Object
Nucleotides*/
Amion acids
Letters
(Building blocks)
B
*Referential *information
Message
Sign
Proteins
Words
(Denotation)
C
*Normative *information
Receiver
Interpretant
Metabolomes
(Totality of cell metabolism)
Systems of words
(Decision making & Reasoning)
f
?
Encoding
Sign production
Physical laws
Second articulation
g
?
Decoding
Sign interpretation
Evoutionary selection
First and Third articulation
h
...
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