Which "information paradigm" is not a discourse framed by the education system?
The value of the discussion about information - circular though it appears to
be - is that we float between discourses. This is a strength. But it is also
the reason why we might feel we're not getting anywhere!
A perspectival shift can help of the kind that Gregory Bateson once talked
about. When we look at a hand, do we see five fingers or four spaces?
Discourses are a bit like fingers, aren't they?
Mark
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terrence W. DEACON
Sent: 09/
-----Original Message-----
From: "Terrence W. DEACON" <dea...@berkeley.edu>
Sent: 09/10/2017 01:31
To: "Sungchul Ji" <s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu>
Cc: "foundationofinformationscience" <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information
Against "meaning"
I think that there is a danger of allowing our anthropocentrism to bias the
discussion. I worry that the term 'meaning' carries too much of a linguistic
bias.
By this I mean that it is too attractive to use language as our archtypical
model when we talk about information.
Language is rather the special case, the most unusual communicative adaptation
to ever have evolved, and one that grows out of and depends on
informationa/semiotic capacities shared with other species and with biology in
general.
So I am happy to see efforts to bring in topics like music or natural signs
like thunderstorms and would also want to cast the net well beyond humans to
include animal calls, scent trails, and molecular signaling by hormones. And it
is why I am more attracted to Peirce and worried about the use of Saussurean
concepts.
Words and sentences can indeed provide meanings (as in Frege's Sinn - "sense" -
"intension") and may also provide reference (Frege's Bedeutung - "reference" -
"extension"), but I think that it is important to recognize that not all signs
fit this model. Moreover,
A sneeze is often interpreted as evidence about someone's state of health, and
a clap of thunder may indicate an approaching storm.
These can also be interpreted differently by my dog, but it is still
information about something, even though I would not say that they mean
something to that interpreter. Both of these phenomena can be said to provide
reference to something other than that sound itself, but when we use such
phrases as "it means you have a cold" or "that means that a storm is
approaching" we are using the term "means" somewhat metaphorically (most often
in place of the more accurate term "indicates").
And it is even more of a stretch to use this term with respect to pictures or
diagrams.
So no one would say the a specific feature like the ears in a caricatured face
mean something.
Though if the drawing is employed in a political cartoon e.g. with exaggerated
ears and the whole cartoon is assigned a meaning then perhaps the exaggeration
of this feature may become meaningful. And yet we would probably agree that
every line of the drawing provides information contributing to that meaning.
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.
For this reason, as I have suggested before, I would love to have a
conversation in which we try to agree about which different uses of the
information concept are appropriate for which contexts. 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.
Thus you can analyze intrinsic properties of an informing medium [e.g. Shannon
etc etc] irrespective of these other properties, but can't make sense of
referential properties [e.g. what something is about, conveys] without
considering intrinsic sign vehicle properties, and can't deal with normative
properties [e.g. use value, contribution to function, significance, accuracy,
truth] without also considering referential properties [e.g. what it is about].
In this respect, I am also in agreement with those who have pointed out that
whenever we consider referential and normative properties we must also
recognize that these are not intrinsic and are interpretation-relative.
Nevertheless, these are legitimate and not merely subjective or nonscientific
properties, just not physically intrinsic. I am sympathetic with those among us
who want to restrict analysis to intrinsic properties alone, and who defend the
unimpeachable value that we have derived from the formal foundations that
Shannon's original analysis initiated, but this should not be used to deny the
legitimacy of attempting to develop a more general theory of information that
also attempts to discover formal principles underlying these higher level
properties implicit in the concept.
I take this to be the intent behind Pedro's list. And I think it would be worth
asking for each of his points: Which information paradigm within this
hoierarchy does it assume?
— Terry
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