Hi Soeren and FISers,
(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):
I_P = log (AUC(PDE)/AUC(GLE))
Tychism is implied in GLE.
(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:
f
g
Random processes -----------> Long-tailed histograms
-------------> PDE
(Firstness)
(Secondness) (Thirdness)
|
^
|
|
|
|
|
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|________________________________________________|
h
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.
(3) (to be continued)
All the best.
Sung
________________________________
From: Søren Brier <sbr....@cbs.dk>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 7:06 PM
To: Sungchul Ji; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier
Cc: fis
Subject: RE: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Dear Sung
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.
Best
Søren
From: Sungchul Ji [mailto:s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu]
Sent: 29. marts 2017 20:35
To: Søren Brier; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Hi Soeren,
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 ?
Thanks in advance.
Sung
________________________________
From: Søren Brier <sbr....@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr....@cbs.dk>>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 2:10 PM
To: Sungchul Ji; Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier
Cc: fis
Subject: RE: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Dear Sung
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.
Best
Søren
From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Sungchul Ji
Sent: 29. marts 2017 00:27
To: Terrence W. DEACON; John Collier
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Hi Fisers,
I agree with Terry that "information" has three irreducible aspects --- amount,
meaning, and value. 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 ? .
f g
Object ---------------> Sign --------------> Interpretant
|
^
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|
|
|
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|_________________________________|
h
Figure 1. The Irreducible Triadic Relation (ITR) of seimosis (also called sign
process or communication) first clearly articulated by Peirce to the best of my
knowledge. Warning: 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.
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 commutative triangle of category
theory, i.e., f x g = h, meaning f followed by g ledes to the same result as h.
I started using the so-called ITR template, Figure 1, 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 Processes f and g in Figure 1) and (ii) the information (and
hence code)-dependent causality (identified with Process h). For convenience,
I coined the term 'codality' to refer to the latter to contrast it with the
traditional term causality.
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 Figure 1.
All the best.
Sung
________________________________
From: Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>>
on behalf of Terrence W. DEACON
<dea...@berkeley.edu<mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 4:23:14 PM
To: John Collier
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Corrected typos (in case the intrinsic redundancy didn't compensate for these
minor corruptions of the text):
information-beqaring medium = information-bearing medium
appliction = application
conceptiont = conception
On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Terrence W. DEACON
<dea...@berkeley.edu<mailto:dea...@berkeley.edu>> wrote:
Dear FIS colleagues,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
— Terry
On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 8:32 PM, John Collier
<colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
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.
* There is a copy at Causation is the Transfer of
Information<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/causinf.pdf> In Howard Sankey (ed)
Causation, Natural Laws and Explanation (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999)
Information is a very powerful concept. It is a shame to restrict oneself to
only a part of its possible applications.
John Collier
Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
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--
Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
--
Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
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