Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information
Subject: Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information [body begins] Thursday, March 15, 2007, 7:46:47 PM, Stanley wrote: Commenting on Robin's text, he said: In this paper I combine and extend some ideas of Daniel Dennett with one from Wittgenstein and another from physics. Dennett introduced the concepts of the physical, design and intentional stances (1987), and has suggested (with John Haugeland) that â*?some concept of INFORMATION could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single theory.â* (Dennett and Haugeland, 1987, emphasis in the original) S: I'm not sure I see a distinction between meaning and mind as they relate to matter. I suppose matter + meaning might be one perspective on mind. I think the quoted statement is perfectly reasonable, because the common concepts of mind and meaning are distinct, while unification is, in fact, what is being proposed. The concept of physical information is now very well established. The famous bet between physicists Stephen Hawking and John Preskill that Hawking conceded heâ*?d lost in July 2004 concerned whether physical information is conserved in black holes. (Preskill, 2004) Physical information is basically material form. The concept derives from C.E. Shannonâ*?s information theory (1948) and has no semantic component. When this concept is taken to its logical conclusion, an energy flow becomes an information flow and an object becomes its own description. The crucial distinction is between form and substance. Dennettâ*?s physical stance could be renamed the â*?substantial stance,â* while I introduce an additional stance to account for information, called the â*?formal stance,â* in which we attend to form rather than substance. S: So, here we have reflected the Aristotelian causal anlaysis: material cause (physical stance), formal cause (design stance). For completion we still want final cause -- directionality, which relates to intentionality, and efficient cause, which determines 'when', or initiates the moment to be consdered. I do not believe that my formal stance is related to Aristotle's formal cause except in the sense that both relate to the concept of form. My account is not primarily about causation, though that comes into it. You've perhaps been mislead by the terminology, and I'm afraid you'll have to forget Aristotle altogether if you want to take my ideas onboard. All I'm saying there (besides the fact that the concept of physical information is well established in physics) is that sometimes we focus on form rather than substance, that this accounts for the concept (in fact all the concepts) of information, and that we can call that focus the formal stance. I hope I don't have to change my terminology. -snip- (The intentional stance actually implies the formal stance, as only information can be intentional.) S: This is to say that whatever happens does so in a context. I don't think so. This is not about whatever happens, because most of what happens has no intentional aspect. Only when sentience comes into the picture does that arise. Contexts embody information, and select what among many possibilities will occur. Yes, but everything embodies information, and the selection can be considered either a physical process (from the physical stance) or an information process (from the formal stance). So, you are saying that intentionality cannot exist outside of some context of possible choices. That might be true but it's not what I intended to say. It would certainly be useful to tie free will in with intentionality. To adopt Dennettâ*?s intentional stance toward an object is to suppose that the object encodes intentional information. S: That is to say, some directional take upon the formal setup, pushing a final causality. No. Or at least I don't think so. We have a clash of paradigms here. I can view these sguiggles on my screen as mere squiggles, or I can read them. To do the latter I have to take the intentional stance towards them, that is to suppose that they encode intentional information, i.e. information that is about something, the usual kind. As mere squiggles, they're physical information. To adopt his design stance is to view something as the product of an intentional information process. S: That would be to say that an existing situation has resulted from past 'descisions' or initiations that, given past designs, resulted in the present setup. Yes. Except that I'm not sure of the significance of given past designs. Past designs will very often be relevant but I doubt whether they're necessarily so. And I'm not sure why you mention situations. The design stance, in the simplest cases, merely distinguishes manufactured objects from natural ones, though it can be applied to natural objects by creationists and those seeking explanations in terms of evolutionary adaptiveness, and also to much more subtle and complex scenarios, such as
Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information
Probably my last message for a while, as I said. Thanks again for your
help.
Subject: Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information
[body begins]
Saturday, March 17, 2007, 2:24:37 PM, Stanley N. Salthe wrote:
A mind is a user or processor of intentional information.
S: That is to say, it initiates finality.
Perhaps, I don't think in these terms.
SS: Well, using 'intentionality' seems to me to implicitly use
finality. Consider {propensity {purpose}}. Intent is necessarilly
directional, and directionality is all that is left is the particular goal
is removed.
OK, now I understand why we keep failing to connect. In philosophy of
mind intentionality refers to the concept revived by Brentano,
meaning aboutness. It has nothing to do with intent except that,
like all other mental phenomena, intent is intentional, i.e. there's
some content, there must be something that you intend to do. I agree
with Brentano that intentionality is the mark of the mental, because
everything that's mental is intentional, and everything that's
physical is not.
Intentionality is central to my thinking, so I don't think there's any
point in continuing this particular exchange. If you'd like to start
again on the basis of this revised understanding then I will respond,
but otherwise I'll keep quiet for a while, as I said in my previous
message, replying to John. I'm really sorry to have wasted your time
by failing to allow for the fact that not everyone who's interested in
information has a phil of mind perspective.
--
Robin Faichney
http://www.robinfaichney.org/
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Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:42:32 -0400 To: fis@listas.unizar.es From: Ted Goranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ; format=flowed Welcome Robin. You can do little better than to engage John Collier on this. I usually agree with him. But in this message, I will try to color some of his references a bit differently. Before we start, you should know that there are several communities here, and you may as well get used to the fact that members from different groups talk past each other. So when you meet each of us virtually, you probably should get an intro as to their basic views. I interpret the agenda of FIS as having a particular challenge. I believe we have need of and are close to a new science, that refactors basic abstractions. And that emergent design and information will be the levers into this new collection of mechanisms. I think it will be intellectually disruptive. I think it will resolve several vexing problems in science and greatly better our state. In this, I am not alone. Others here have a more tempered view. Some come from the semiotic side and apply those notions to physics and chemistry. They are a particularly articulate group. Another rather substantial group I will call the statistical machinists who go the other way in terms of basic abstractions from physics carried over to all phenomenon. They at least have good arithmetic, and that's not be taken lightly. You may think of these groups as revolutionaries, neopeirceans and anentropists. While we are pretty levelheaded and generous here - guided by the example of our kind host and moderator Pedro - we do tend to stick to our own religions. Now, John said: The most Wittgensteinian approach to intentionality is, in my opinion, in Situations and Attitudes by Jon Barwise and John Perry. I think it is flawed, as it does not properly incorporate standard logic (this is a problem that Jerry Fodor harps on, a bit excessively perhaps, and to the wrong effect, but basically he is right). (snip) There is a nice, accessible account of Barwise and Perry in Keith Devlin, Information and Logic. John is right about Barwise and Perry, at least initially. But you have to place that in perspective: 25 years ago, when situation theory was cooked up to deal with a fairly quaint and now forgotten linguistic problem. Situation theory in later years under Barwise was used as the basis for a rather clever axiomatic approach to formalizing abstraction mechanisms. This would hardly be characterized as Wittgensteinian, and by this I think you both mean the middle period. Perry and Israel have stuck with the original notion as John noted. Devlin's book doesn't merely describe Barwise and Perry, but rationalizes them in a more general domain of formal reasoning. As it happens, next week I will be with Devlin. You may have gotten the impression that situation theory does not properly incorporate standard logic. This is incorrect in many uses of the system. Many workers, including Devlin with Rosenberg, Barwise in later work, myself with Cardier, and Ginzburg and Sag, work with the system as if it were fully standard logic plus an axiomatic basis and workable calculus to include context or alternatively, draw intention. Next week with a colleague I am presenting a paper describing an emergent situation theory that empowers agent systems with just the sorts of abstractions the revolutionaries here might appreciate to create the emergent behaviors we observe in the world. This mechanism allows agents to build narratives from the bottom up and seemingly addresses some of the more vexing problems of the FIS agenda. Of course John is on solid ground as well with his approach which by his vocation needs to be more respectful of the past than mine. On this, here you will find two different viewpoints. Some will argue that what they present is the correct, best, even the only way. Figuratively, God must have imagined it so. I'm with the other camp who believes that all this is a matter of modeling. You choose your abstractions and circumspectly invent your logics to suit what you wish to accomplish and what needs you have of understanding the world. Welcome again. - Ted Goranson -- __ Ted Goranson Sirius-Beta ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
