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<p>Hi Soeren and FISers,</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>(1) Tychism is intrinsic to the Planckian information, since it is defined as the binary logarithm of the ratio of the area under the curve (AUC) of the Planckian distribution (PDE) over the AUC of the Gaussian-like Equation (GLE):</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> I_P = log (AUC(PDE)/AUC(GLE))</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Tychism is implied in GLE.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>(2) The Planckian processes are defined as those physicochemical or formal processes that generate long-tailed histograms (or their superpositions) fitting PDE (or its suppositions). The Planckian process seems irreducibly triadic in the Peircean sesne: <br>
<br>
<br>
</p>
<p> f g</p>
<p> Random processes -----------> Long-tailed histograms -------------> PDE </p>
<p> (Firstness) (Secondness) (Thirdness)</p>
<p> | ^</p>
<p> | |</p>
<p> | |</p>
<p> | |</p>
<p> |________________________________________________| </p>
<p> h</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Figure 2. The Irreducible Triadic Relation (ITR) embodied in the Planckian processes. f = selection process either natural or artificial; g = mathematical modeling; h = grounding, correspondence, or information flow. </p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>(3) (to be continued)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>All the best.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Sung</p>
<p><br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Søren Brier <sbr.msc@cbs.dk><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, March 29, 2017 7:06 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Sungchul Ji; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier<br>
<b>Cc:</b> fis<br>
<b>Subject:</b> RE: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information</font>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">Dear Sung</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">It is difficult for me to say as you do not make your metaphysical framework explicit. This was the great work Peirce did. I am pretty sure you do not have a dynamic triadic
process concept of semiosis based on a tychastic theory of Firstness as potential qualia or forms of feeling of which information is only an aspect.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">Best</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> Søren</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif""> Sungchul Ji [mailto:sji@pharmacy.rutgers.edu]
<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 29. marts 2017 20:35<br>
<b>To:</b> Søren Brier; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier<br>
<b>Cc:</b> fis<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Hi Soeren,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Can you be more specific about what aspect of my proposal described in my previous emails you think are my own and has nothing to do with (or are even based on my misinterpretation of) Peirce
?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Thanks in advance.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Sung</span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> Søren Brier <<a href="mailto:sbr.msc@cbs.dk" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">sbr.msc@cbs.dk</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, March 29, 2017 2:10 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Sungchul Ji; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier<br>
<b>Cc:</b> fis<br>
<b>Subject:</b> RE: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">
</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">Dear Sung</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">I suggest you call this your own theory and make your own definitions of terms, because you confuse things by attempting to draw on Peirce, because there is a whole process
philosophy with synechism, tychism, agapism and Scholastic realism plus a phenomenological and mathematically based triadic metaphysics as the basis of Peirce’s concepts, which is the fruit of his life’s work. I do not think you are ready to carry that load.
It takes many years to understand fully. The ‘sign’ is a triadic process of representamen, object and interpretant working in the realm of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness in a society at large or a society of researchers devoted to the search for truth
producing the meaning of signs, which when developed into propositional arguments can be tested in the fallible scientific process of generating more rationality in culture as well as nature.</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D">Best</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> Søren</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"; color:black">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"; color:black"> Fis [<a href="mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es</a>]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Sungchul Ji<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 29. marts 2017 00:27<br>
<b>To:</b> Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier<br>
<b>Cc:</b> fis<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Hi Fisers,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">I agree with Terry that "information" has three irreducible aspects ---
<i>amount</i>, <i>meaning</i>, and <i>value</i>. 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 ? . </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> f g</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> Object ---------------> Sign --------------> Interpretant</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> | ^<br>
| |<br>
| |<br>
| |<br>
|_________________________________| </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> h</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Figure 1.</span></b><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> The
<i>Irreducible Triadic Relation</i> (ITR) of seimosis (also called sign process or communication) first clearly articulated by Peirce to the best of my knowledge.
</span><i><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:red">Warning</span></i><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:red">: 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. </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> 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 <i>commutative triangle</i> of category theory, i.e., f x g = h, meaning f followed by g ledes to the same result as h.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">I started using the so-called ITR template,
<b>Figure 1</b>, 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
<i>Processes f </i>and<i> g</i> in <b>Figure 1</b>) and (ii) the information (and hence code)-dependent causality (identified with
<i>Process h</i>). For convenience, I coined the term '</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:red">codality</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">' to refer to the latter to contrast it with the traditional
term </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:red">causality</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">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<b>igure 1.</b> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">All the best.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">Sung </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black"> Fis <<a href="mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es</a>>
on behalf of Terrence W. DEACON <<a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">deacon@berkeley.edu</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, March 28, 2017 4:23:14 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> John Collier<br>
<b>Cc:</b> fis<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information</span><span style="color:black">
</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">Corrected typos (in case the intrinsic redundancy didn't compensate for these minor corruptions of the text):
</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:10.0pt; color:black"> information-beqaring medium = information-bearing medium</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:10.0pt; color:black">appliction = application</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:10.0pt; color:black"> conceptiont = conception</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Terrence W. DEACON <<a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">deacon@berkeley.edu</a>> wrote:</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">Dear FIS colleagues,</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">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.
</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">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. </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">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. </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">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. </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">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.</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">— Terry</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 8:32 PM, John Collier <<a href="mailto:Collierj@ukzn.ac.za" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Collierj@ukzn.ac.za</a>> wrote:</span></p>
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<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black">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.</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<ul type="disc" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<li style="color: black; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
<span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:windowtext">There is a copy at </span><span lang="EN-ZA"><a href="http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/causinf.pdf" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Causation is the Transfer of Information</a> In
Howard Sankey (ed) <i>Causation, Natural Laws and Explanation</i> (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999)</span></li></ul>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black">Information is a very powerful concept. It is a shame to restrict oneself to only a part of its possible applications.</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black">John Collier</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black">Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black">Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black"><a href="http://web.ncf.ca/collier" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">http://web.ncf.ca/collier</a></span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-ZA" style="color:black"> </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">_______________________________________________<br>
Fis mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br>
<a href="http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis" target="_blank" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis</a></span></p>
</blockquote>
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<p><span style="color:#888888"><br>
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<p><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:#888888">-- </span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
<div>
<p><span style="color:#888888">Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley</span><span style="color:black"></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">-- </span></p>
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<p><span style="color:black">Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley</span></p>
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