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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear Fernando and Luis,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Your paper is very rich and very serious, and so I
hope you will accept my slightly different perspective and see it as a basis for
further foundational work, rather than just criticism. I will first make
just two comments here:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1. Matter is potentiality, actuality and form. This
is true, but the relationships between the three need to be further specified,
since the terms themselves correspond to real physical properties. To come out
with only epistemological categories (knowledge and praxis) is too limiting.
Real change involves movement from potentiality to actuality (Aristotle) but
also actuality to potentiality, often at the same time (Aristotle missed
this).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2. Decisions to create informational values can be
represented as a series of 0's and 1's. This is also true, but it and your
initial examples create a binary framework that seems to refer primarily to
quantitative value. This approach is computationally tractable,
but might fail to capture qualitative aspects of 'vital acts'. In
fact, you present vital acts in terms of power and competitive (survival)
success, modernization as mechanization. In my opinion, informational values
include but are not limited to these. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I look forward very much to comments by you and
others on these points.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Best,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Joseph</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Joseph E. Brenner, Ph.D.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Les Diablerets, Switzerland</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>International Society for Information Studies,
Vienna, Austria</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>International Center for the Philosophy of
Information, Xi'An, China</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es
href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">Pedro C. Marijuan</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=fis@listas.unizar.es
href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es">'fis'</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, July 22, 2015 2:33
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Fis] Information Foundation of
the Act--F.Flores & L.deMarcos</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV align=center><BIG><BIG><B><BR>The informational foundation of the
act</B></BIG></BIG><BR><B>Fernando Flores</B><BR>Lund University<BR><A
class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated
href="mailto:fernando.flores@kultur.lu.se">fernando.flores@kultur.lu.se</A><BR><BR><B>Luis
de-Marcos</B><BR>University of Alcalá<BR><A class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated
href="mailto:luis.demarcos@uah.es">luis.demarcos@uah.es</A><BR><BR><BIG><BIG><I>See
the whole text at: <A class=moz-txt-link-freetext
href="http://fis.sciforum.net/resources/">http://fis.sciforum.net/resources/</A></I></BIG></BIG><BR></DIV><SMALL><FONT
size=+2><SMALL><BR></SMALL></FONT></SMALL>
<P><SMALL><FONT size=+2><SMALL>Our introducing paper (35 pages) presents a
theory that quantifies the informational value of human acts. We argue that
living is functioning against entropy and following Erwin Schrödinger we call
this tendency “negentropy”. Negentropy is for us the reason behind “order” in
social and cultural life. Further, we understand “order” as the condition that
the world reaches when the informational value of a series of acts is low.
Acting is presented as a set of decisions and choices that create order and
this is the key concept of our understanding of the variation from simplicity
to complexity in human acts. The most important aim of our theory is to
measure non-economic acts trying to understand and explain their importance
for society and culture. In their turn such a theory will be also important to
understand the similarities and differences between non-economic and economic
acts. <BR>We follow the classical concept according to which informational
value is proportional to the unlikelihood of an act. To capture the richness
of the unlikelihood of human acts we use the frequency theory of probability
developed by Ludwig von Mises and Karl Popper. Frequency theory of probability
allows us to describe a variety of acts from the must most “free” to the least
“free” with respect to precedent acts. In short, we characterize human acts in
terms of their degree of freedom trying to set up a scale of the information
and predictability carried out in human decisions. A taxonomy of acts is also
presented, categorizing acts as destructive, mechanical, ludic or vital,
according to their degree of freedom (complexity). A formulation to estimate
the informational value in individual and collective acts follows. The final
part of the paper presents and discuss the consequences of our theory. We
argue that artifacts embed information and that modernization can be
understood as a one-way process to embed acts of high levels of complexity in
simple devices. However, our theory assumes that the total amount of
information in the social and cultural world is constant and that Modernity
only enables us to redistribute our informational potential. We also advocate
for the development of a new science named “agnumetry”, the science that
quantify Modernity, measuring the obsolescence of an environment (from agnumy
the Greek word for “break”). <BR>In our study of human acts we found that
acting can also be classified as productive, consumptive and as acts of
exchange or economical. The informational value of acts can be the expression
of any or all of these acting forms. We outline the relation between the
informational value of production and the informational value of consumption
(which we call “operative information”), and conclude that these acts define
the non-economic value. Sometimes, and depending on the social level of
informational value, the acts of exchange emerge defining the informational
value of an item at the market, an informational value that assumes the shape
of “price” justifying the use of money.</SMALL></FONT></SMALL></P><PRE class=moz-signature cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
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 X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
<A class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</A>
<A class=moz-txt-link-freetext href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</A>
-------------------------------------------------
</PRE>
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