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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>re: it is likely to be problematic to use language as the paradigm model
for all communication--Terrence Deacon</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Terry makes interesting points, but I think on this one, he may be
wrong. Guenther Witzany is on to something. our previous
approaches to information have been what Barbara Ehrenreich, in her
introduction to the upcoming paperback of my book The God Problem: How a Godless
Cosmos Creates, calls "a kind of unacknowledged necrophilia."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>we've been using dead things to understand living things. aristotle
put us on that path when he told us that if we could break things down to their
"elements" and understand what he called the "laws" of those elements, we'd
understand everything. Newton took us farther down that path when he said
we could understand everything using the metaphor of the "contrivance," the
machine--the metaphor of "mechanics" and of "mechanism." </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Aristotle and Newton were wrong. Their ideas have had centuries to
pan out, and they've led to astonishing insights, but they've left us blind
to the relational aspect of things. utterly blind.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>the most amazing metaphor of relationality available to us is not math,
it's not mechanism, and it's not reduction to "elements," it's language.
by using the metaphor of a form of language called "code," watson and
crick were able to understand what a strand of dna does and
how. without language as metaphor, we'd still be in the dark
about the genome.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>i'm convinced that by learning the relational secrets of the body of work
of a Shakespeare or a Goethe we could crack some of the secrets we've been
utterly unable to comprehend, from what makes the social clots we call a
galaxy's spiral arms (a phenomenon that astronomer Greg Matloff, <SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial'>a
Fellow of the British interplanetary Society,</SPAN> says defies the laws
of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics) to what makes the difference between
life and death.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>in other words, it's time we confess in science just how little we know
about language, that we explore language's mysteries, and that we use our
discoveries as a crowbar to pry open the secrets of this highly contextual,
deeply relational, profoundly communicational cosmos.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>with thanks for tolerating my opinions.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 size=2 face="Century Gothic" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">____________<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of: <I>The Lucifer Principle:
A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History</I> ("mesmerizing"-<I>The
Washington Post</I>),<BR><I>Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The
Big Bang to the 21st Century</I> ("reassuring and sobering"-<I>The New
Yorker)</I>,<BR><I>The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of
Capitalism</I> ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National
Correspondent, <I>The Atlantic</I>),<BR><I>The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos
Creates</I> ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara
Ehrenreich),<BR><I>How I Accidentally Started the Sixties</I> ("Wow! Whew!
Wild!<BR>Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and<BR><I>The Mohammed Code</I> ("A
terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." David Swindle,<I> PJ
Media</I>).<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute; Former Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University.<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space
Development Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding
Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin
Project; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory
Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space
Society.</FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Verdana FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 9/28/2015 11:47:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-LEFT: 10px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial><SMALL><FONT size=+2><SMALL>From
Terry...</SMALL></FONT></SMALL><BR><BR>-------- Original Message --------
<TABLE class=moz-email-headers-table cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>Subject: </TH>
<TD>Re: [Fis] Information is a linguistic description of
structures</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>Date: </TH>
<TD>Sun, 27 Sep 2015 22:13:14 -0700</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>From: </TH>
<TD>Terrence W. Deacon <A title=mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu"><deacon@berkeley.edu></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>To: </TH>
<TD>Pedro C. Marijuan <A title=mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es"><pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>CC: </TH>
<TD>Günther Witzany <A title=mailto:witzany@sbg.at
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:witzany@sbg.at"><witzany@sbg.at></A>, <A
title=mailto:farah@howardbloom.net class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:farah@howardbloom.net"><farah@howardbloom.net></A>,
fis <A title=mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es"><fis@listas.unizar.es></A>,
Emanuel Diamant <A title=mailto:emanl.245@gmail.com
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:emanl.245@gmail.com"><emanl.245@gmail.com></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>References: </TH>
<TD><A title=mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com"><000201d0f68c$77d02b50$677081f0$@gmail.com></A>
<A title=mailto:0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at"><0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at></A>
<A title=mailto:56053208.2000406@aragon.es class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:56053208.2000406@aragon.es"><56053208.2000406@aragon.es></A></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR><BR>
<DIV dir=ltr>As exemplified in Guenther's auxin example, and Pedro's worries
about the procrustean use of language metaphors in the discussion of inter-
and intra-cellular communication, it is likely to be problematic to use
language as the paradigm model for all communication, much less as the
foundation upon which to build a general theory of information. From an
evolutionary point of view, language is a highly derived human idiosyncratic
form of communication that evolved only very recently in vertebrate
phylogeny, in only one species, and is supported by a vast semiotic cognitive
and social infrastructure. Communication in a more general sense is vastly
older and far more generic. For this reason, it is wise to avoid talking in
terms of the semantics of a cough, the meaning of a piece of music, or the
syntax of a skunk's odor. The use of Carnap's approach to language semantics
and various other uses of linguistic categories in information theoretic
analyses needs to be understood as a special case, not the generic form.
I would recommend that presentations and comments to them be framed with
appropriate caveats, indicating whether they address such special cases of
human information or are intended to be generic. </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra><FONT face=Verdana></FONT><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 4:37 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan
<SPAN dir=ltr><<A title=mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es
href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es"
target=_blank>pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<DIV bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">Dear FISers and all,<BR><BR>I include
below another response to Immanuel post (from Guenther). I think he has
penned an excellent response--my only addition is to expostulate a doubt.
Should our analysis of the human (or cellular!) communication with the
environment be related to linguistic practices? In short, my argument is
that biological self-production becomes "la raison d'etre" of communication,
both concerning its evolutionary origins and the continuous opening towards
the environment along the different stages of the individual's life
cycle<BIG><BIG><SMALL><SMALL>. It is cogent that the same messenger plays
quite different roles in different specialized cells --we have to
disentangle in each case how the impinging "info" affects the ongoing life
cycle (the impact upon the transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, etc.) There
is no shortcut to the endless work necessary--wet lab & in silico. So I
think that Encode and other big projects are quite useful in the continuous
exploration of biological complexity and provide us valuable conceptual
stuff--but looking for hypothetical big formalisms (I quite agree) is out
sight. Molecular recognition which is the at the fundamentals of
biological organization can only provide modest guidelines about the main
informational architectures of life... beyond that, there is too much
complexity, endless complexity to contemplate, particularly when we try to
study multicellular organization. Anyhow, this topic of the essential
informational openness of the individual's life cycle appears to me as the
Gordian knot to be cut for the advancement of our field: otherwise we will
never connect meaningfully with the endless info flows that interconnect our
societies, generated from the life cycles of individuals and addressed to
the life cycles of other individuals. Info sources, channels for info flows,
and info receptors are not mere Shannonian overtones, they symbolically
refer to the very info skeleton of our societies; or looking dynamically it
is the engine of social history and of social complexity. <BR><BR>Well,
sorry that I could not express myself better.<BR><BR>all the best--Pedro
</SMALL></SMALL><BR></BIG></BIG><BR>Günther Witzany wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=http://mid0D34F6EF-19E6-4C9C-A9D3-ABA4F5F2E7C7@sbg.at
type="cite">Dear all!
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>What is the opposite of a linguistic description? a non-linguistic
description? Please tell me one possible explanation of a non-linguistic
description. So Im not convinced of the sense of the term
"information". </DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Concerning the "difference" of physical and semantic information:
What would you prefer in the case of plant communication. Does the
chemical Auxin represent a physical or a semantic information? Auxin
is used in hormonal, morphogenic, and transmitter pathways. As an
extracellular signal at the plant synapse, auxin serves to react to
light and gravity. It also serves as an extracellular messenger
substance to send electrical signals and functions as a
synchronization signal for cell division. At the intercellular,
whole plant level, it supports cell division in the cambium, and at
the tissue level, it promotes the maturation of vascular tissue
during embryonic development, organ growth as well as tropic
responses and apical dominance. In intracellular signaling, auxin
serves in organogenesis, cell development, and differentiation. Especially
in the organogenesis of roots, for example, auxin enables cells to
determine their position and their identity. These multiple
functions of auxin demonstrate that identifying the momentary usage
(its semantics) is extremely difficult because the context
(investigation object of pragmatics) of use can be very complex and
highly diverse, although the chemical property remains the same.</DIV>
<DIV>Yes, mathematics is an artificial language. Last century the
Pythagorean approach, mathematics represents material reality, (if we use
mathematics we reconstruct creators thoughts) was reactivated: Exact
science must represent observations as well as theories in mathematical
equations. Then it would be sure to represent reality, because brain
synapse logics then could express its own material reality. But this was
proven as error. Prior to all artificial languages we learned how to
interconnect linguistic utterances with practical behavior in
socialisation; therefore the ultimate meta-language is everyday language
with its visible superficial grammar and its invisible deep grammar that
transports the intended meaning. How should computers extract deep grammar
structures out of measurable superficial syntax structures? In the case of
ENCODE project (to find the human genome primary data structures) this was
the aim which got financial support of 3 billion dollars with the result
of detecting the superficial grammar only, nothing else.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Best Wishes</DIV>
<DIV>Guenther</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=h5>
<DIV>
<DIV>Am 24.09.2015 um 07:47 schrieb Emanuel Diamant:</DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72">
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>Dear FIS
colleagues,</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>As a
newcomer to FIS, I feel myself very uncomfortable when I have to
interrupt the ongoing discourse with something that looks for me quite
natural but is lacking in our current public dialog. What I have in mind
is that in every discussion or argument exchange, first of all, the
grounding axioms and mutually agreed assumptions should be established
and declared as the basis for further debating and reasoning. Maybe in
our case, these things are implied by default, but I am not a part of
the dominant coalition. For this reason, I would dare to formulate some
grounding axioms that may be useful for those who are not FIS
insiders:</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>1.
<B>Information is a linguistic description of structures observable in a
given data set</B></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>2. Two
types of data structures could be distinguished in a data set: primary
and secondary data structures.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>3.
Primary data structures are data clusters or clumps arranged or
occurring due to the similarity in physical properties of adjacent data
elements. For this reason, the primary data structures could be called
physical data structures.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>4.
Secondary data structures are specific arrangements of primary data
structures. The grouping of primary data structures into secondary data
structures is a prerogative of an external observer and it is guided by
his subjective reasons, rules and habits. The secondary data structures
exist only in the observer’s head, in his mind. Therefore, they could be
called meaningful or semantic data structures. </SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>5. As it
was said earlier, <B>Description of structures observable in a data set
should be called “Information”. </B>In this regard, two types of
information must be distinguished – <B>Physical Information and Semantic
Information</B>. </SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>6. Both
are language-based descriptions; however, physical information can be
described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is also a
language), while semantic information can be described only by means of
natural human language.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>This is
a concise set of axioms that should preface all our further discussions.
You can accept them. You can discard them and replace them with better
ones. But you can not proceed without basing your discussion on a
suitable and appropriate set of axioms.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>That is
what I have to say at this moment.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>My best
regards to all of you,</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif"'>Emanuel.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal></P>
<P
class=MsoNormal> </P></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><SPAN
class=HOEnZb><FONT color=#888888><BR><BR><PRE 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. <A title="tel:+34 976 71 3526" href="tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526" target=_blank value="+34976713526">+34 976 71 3526</A> (& 6818)
<A title=mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target=_blank>pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</A>
<A title=http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" target=_blank>http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</A>
-------------------------------------------------
</PRE></FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Fis
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target=_blank>http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis</A><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR
clear=all>
<DIV><BR></DIV>-- <BR>
<DIV class=gmail_signature>Professor Terrence W. Deacon<BR>University of
California, Berkeley</DIV></DIV><BR><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 title=mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</A>
<A title=http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ class=moz-txt-link-freetext href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</A>
-------------------------------------------------
</PRE><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Fis mailing
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