Hi folks, it's a long time since I contributed, but now I have something new to say (new to me, anyway!).
To me this issue is very simple: the meaning of information to a receiving system is the effect on the system of the reception of the information.
This makes meaning relative, but I believe that's both as it should be, and quite easily understood:
I've very recently been studying Millikan's biosemantics, in which "proper function" is determined genetically: it is the function of the heart to pump blood because that's what its predecessors were selected to do. The concept of function is required in order to allow for a representation or meaning to be false, or misleading: in that case, the function fails to do what it is "supposed to". It occurred to me, that is good as far as it goes, but too restrictive: functionality should be seen as relative to a given context. In the context of biology, Millikan's "proper function" is appropriate, but in most contexts that people are concerned with, the context is human aims and aspirations. Within that category there are different levels, notably that of the individual and of the society, but that's just another aspect of context. In any case, the context determines the meaning of information. How that does that relate to my first statement? The context will determine, for instance, whether the system we look at to determine the effect of the information is an individual or a population. But of course there are many other complexities to consider!
Thanks for your patience from a mere dabbler...
Robin
Monday, November 30, 2009, 11:48:21 AM, Christophe wrote:
|
> |
Yes Joseph, you are right. As the satisfaction of the constraint is mandatory for the system to maintain its nature, system and constraint are indeed tightly linked. The “stay alive” constraint came up on earth with the first organisms that had to maintain a local far from equilibrium status. The existence of the constraint goes with the being of the living entity. As we are all more or less Cartesian networked, we are naturally brought to identify components. (“divide each of the problems I was examining in as many parts as I could”). More on this in a wider perspective at http://www.idt.mdh.se/ECAP-2005/INFOCOMPBOOK/CHAPTERS/MenantChristophe.pdf All the best Christophe
From: [email protected] To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Fis] Asymetry and Information: A modest proposal Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:01:35 +0100 |
Dear Christophe,
I like your approach. Here is something even simpler: the system is the meaning of the information. System and meaning are not totally separable. One's perspective focuses on one or the other, as the case may be.
Best wishes,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: Christophe Menant
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 9:30 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Asymetry and Information: A modest proposal
Dear all,
As the notion of information is again (and interestingly) put on the forefront, let’s not forget the evolutionary approach that naturally introduces the notion of meaning and allows to bring in a system oriented perspective.
Assuming we put aside the reason of being of the universe, there is no entity to care about information before the coming up of life on earth.
Information is a notion that we humans have invented as a set of tools to help the understanding and managing of our world. And animals also manage information.
A basic tool is the measurement of the quantity of information with the Shannon transmission capacity of a channel, whatever the meaning of the information being transmitted thru the channel.
The meaning of an information can be called many names: content, purpose, aboutness, goal, target, sense, aim, …
As already presented in the FIS discussions, I feel that the meaning of information (whatever it’s naming) exists because there is a system that needs this meaning, a system that creates this meaning or uses it in order to satisfy a constraint. The system being an animal, a human or an artificial system. The constraints guiding the meaning generation can be very many. Constraints are then organic (stay alive, maintain the species, …), human (valorise ego, look for happiness, …), artificial (obey a process, …). And following such an approach allows to model meaning generation by a simple system usable for animals and humans and robots (1), (2).
This does not pretend answering all the questions related to the complex subject of meaningful information, but it introduces that needed notion in simple terms.
All the best
Christophe
(1) http://cogprints.org/6279/2/MGS.pdf
(2) http://www.eucognition.org/uploads/docs/First_Meeting_Hamburg/Workshop_A__menant-web.pdf
> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:53:48 +0200
> To: [email protected]; [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Asymetry and Information: A modest proposal
>
> At 11:13 PM 2009/11/27, you wrote:
> >Dear Joseph,
> >
> >Be my guest and have some Irish children for breakfast!
> >
> >I did not mean my intervention as directed against substantive theorizing.
> >In addition to a mathematical theory of communication, we need substantive
> >theories of communication. This became clear to me when Maturana formulated
> >life as a consequence of the communication of molecules. If atoms are
> >communicated, one obtains a theory of chemical evolution (Mason), etc. All
> >these special theories of communication can usefully be matched with a
> >mathematical theory of communication (or perhaps more generally non-linear
> >dynamics).
> >
> >The special case, of course, is when one multiplies H with k(B) that one
> >obtains S (Joule/Kelvin). John seems to imply that there is another unit of
> >information in physics which is a conserved entity. John: Can you perhaps
> >provide the dimensionality of this unit and provide the derivation?
>
> Dear Loet,
>
> It is usually defined as a bit, which is understood as a binary distinction,
> wherefore the "it from bit" formulation found in a number of places, but
> the term is due, I believe, to John Wheeler. More typically the term is
> related to entropy considerations (as in the black hole case). My
> derivation is by dimensional analysis. Entropy is the compliment
> of information. If we take the maximal entropy of a system by
> relaxing all constraints with no other change in macroscopic
> parametres (impossible in practice, but possible in the imagination),
> and subtract from this the statistical entropy using Boltzman's
> formulation based on the number of complexions of the system,
> we get negentropy, which can be identified with the information
> in the system. This will break up into two parts, configurational
> and statistical. The it from bit view is usually talking of configurational
> information. The difference between the two is largely a matter of relative
> time scale, butt the time scale differences are typically large, so
> there is a qualitative difference. So negentropy (physical information)
> should be in entropy units. Entropy, as you point out, can be measured
> as joules per degree Kelvin. Going back to basics, joules are energy,
> and degrees Kelvin as average energy per degree of freedom.
> Dividing through by the energy, and correcting for the double denominator,
> we get information in units of degrees of freedom. I submit that bits
> are an excellent measure of degrees of freed, both being pure numbers.
>
> So that is it, information (and entropy) are pure numbers with dimensions
> of degrees of freedom. Boltzman's constant relates this to energy
> measures and other physical values. However, information as
> a measure of degrees of freedom can be used in more abstract
> formulations as well (it implies Shannon's approach, as well as
> all but the required machine dependent part of the computational
> approach). I think it is as fundamental as we can get.
>
> I've argued this all on the list in one place or another before.
>
> John
>
>
> ----------
> Professor John Collier [email protected]
> Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
> T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
> http://www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
>
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