Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 02:22:31 +0100
Reply-To: Nick Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: Cybernetics Discussion Group <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Nick Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Real Time Study Group
Subject: Re: Relational philosophy of information
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Towards the end of his life Pask's relational theory of information settled
on force (bosons) as the determinant in meaningful information transfer (His
last theorem: Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract. A concept is any
circular process in any medium).
Context and perspective determined the nature of the interpretation (in what
was effectively an n-body problem) of the meaning. Differences were the
outcome of dynamically shifting equilibria.
But I imagine he would say Fredkin was flawed because his automata require a
master clock and operate serially unlike the universe which is concurrent
(as distinct from highly parallel). Fredkin could not (with his clock)
account for the incommensurability of private time for interacting actors
(with their different dynamical histories). Thus Fredkin's model could not
account for General Relativity which is a necessary constraint on all our
interactions. Some of this can be seen in his recently published (on the
web) final draft of Interactions of Actors Theory.
http://www.cybsoc.org/gordon.htm
It is startling and helpful to realise that to Pask Spencer-Brown's
distinction exerted a repulsive force to be distinct. Indeed Pask's
"repulsive carapace" was a feature of both distinguishable bodies and their
states or minds. It follows we need a force axiom to set up counting
correctly.
I'm not sure if this helps but von Foerster called Gordon the
cybernetician's cybernetician and his ideas can often be applied with great
success to decide a tricky issue.
Nick Green
Cybernetics Society
www.cybsoc.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Lieber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 6:37 PM
Subject: Re: Relational philosophy of information
| The term that gets you to Bateson's notion of meaning for the interacting
| parties is "message," which implies both specific referents (e.g., THAT
| one, the chair to your left, Mikey, soup, etc.) and the likelihood of
| occurrence of the specific referent. The trouble is that Bateson
| sometimes uses the term information as synonymous with meaning, for
| example in his development of the term "context" (see his comments on
| Parts 2, 3, and 4 in Steps. Here he talks about "contextual structure,"
| as "the rules for putting information together" where he clearly means
| putting messages together. Since I use Bateson's idea of context
| constantly in my own work, I try to be very careful about how I use
| information and message. Does this help at all?
|
| On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Francis Heylighen wrote:
|
| > Seth:
| > >I was just thinking and came to somewhat of a conundrum. In the ever
| > >unsuccessful attempts to try to operationally define information,
| > >aside from Shannon and Weiner identification of it with entropy (I
| > >know its not exactly identical, but you know what I mean) the real
| > >problem occurs in trying to define it in terms of something else.
| > >What do we define information in terms of, matter? Energy? What does
| > >this mean?
| >
| > What about Bateson's famous definition of information as "a
| > difference that makes a difference"? The "difference" concepts refers
| > to Shannon's "syntactical" view which defines information in terms of
| > the possible number of states that a message could have (the more
| > states, the more differences, the more potential information). The
| > "making a difference" can be seen as referring to the "pragmatical"
| > dimension of information: the message should not only be
| > distinguishable, but relevant or meaningful, i.e. it should make a
| > difference for the receiver, helping the receiver to make this
| > decision rather than that one, and thus achieving a better or more
| > desirable situation.
| >
| > For example, if someone sends me the New York telephone book, but I
| > don't know anybody in New York and am not planning to go there, this
| > message contains a lot of information in the Shannon, syntactic
| > sense, but none in the Bateson, pragmatic sense. I might as well
| > have received several megabytes of random numbers and letters. On the
| > other hand, if I was desperately trying to trace a person of whom I
| > only know the name and the fact that she lives in New York, the
| > message may be a godsend, and make a huge difference to my life.
| >
| > >Do we go the route of Fredkin and just insist information is the
| > >fundamental in which everything else is defined by?
| >
| >
| > The "difference that makes a difference" can also be interpreted in a
| > more metaphysical, ontological sense as describing the fundamentally
| > relational nature of reality: no phenomenon (difference) can exist on
| > its own , it must somehow be related (covary) with some other
| > phenomenon (another difference). This is actually the basis of my own
| > philosophy and its "bootstrapping axiom", which says that
| > distinctions (differences) are not given, but produce each other. It
| > builds further on Leibniz's principle of the "the identity of the
| > indistinguishables". See http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/IDENINDI.html
| >
| > In that sense, information (or rather relationality) is the
| > fundamental in terms of which everything else is defined (including
| > matter and energy). However, this is not the Shannon information
| > which consists of independent "bits", but the Bateson one that
| > consists of mutually dependent differences.
| >
| > > I'm not sure yet exactly how this ties in with a global brain, but
| > >you never know where inspiration will come from, you know? I just
| > >want to see what other people think?
| >
| > The relation with the GB is of course that the GB is one huge network
| > of relations along which information propagates, and as such merely a
| > more complex organization emerging out of the simpler relational
| > networks that have been existing all along... The intelligence of the
| > GB consists in recognizing which differences make the more important
| > differences, thus allowing it to filter out the meaning out of the
| > sea of data.
| > --
| >
| > Francis Heylighen
| > Center "Leo Apostel"
| > Free University of Brussels
| > http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
| >
|
|
