Dear All, In coming to Krassimir's defense, I do not wish to abrogate the science of the last 100-150 years, but to suggest only that the "appeal to authority", here as elsewhere, should not block criticism. The standard meaning of information is also "restricted" in some senses. The dimension that Krassimir and his source are pointing to is not "just" poetic, but describes real interactions between sender and receiver. However, I would criticize absolute statements such as "nothing is transferred". In my approach to logic (which I hope John includes in his "various" logics), it is not necessary to make an absolute distinction between the concept of information and its causal and material properties. They are dialectically linked. On the other hand, I think it is important to emphasize, as Krassimir does, that there are properties of information that cannot be measured. This point, and the others above, will not constitute an entire, monolithic Information Theory, nor its entire essence. But they should be taken into account as part of the "common" meanings of various theories which I, /pace/ John :-) find most interesting. Best, Joseph ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht---- Von: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Datum: 31.01.2011 17:35 An: <fis@listas.unizar.es> Betreff: [Fis] [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Info Theory]--From John Collier (Msg. from John Collier) Unfortunately for your position, Krassimir, there is a well established usage of information in physics going back to Szillard's discussion of Maxwell's Demon in 1929, well before the dawn of communication theory. This usage is firmly entrenched in physics, used by such notables as Gell Mann, Wheeler and Hawking. So as far as usage of the word "information" is concerned, you were trumped long ago. I suggest that you, when using the word "information" make clear that you are using a specific restricted meaning rather than the general term. In fact I think that everyone on the list should practice similar hygiene. The word "information" has a range of meanings that are related much like Wittgenstein's family resemblances. It is perhaps a paradigmatic case of this. Anything in common is pretty basic, and not very interesting, to my mind, but worth working out in any case. There are connections of information theory to various logics, including the logic of distinctions and its extensionally equivalent propositional logic, predicate logic, and various other logics of a more restricted realm. These are all worth working out. However I think it is pointless, or nearly so, to try to find the one true meaning of 'information' (I use the philosopher's convention for single and double quotes in this post). I wish people would just let it go, and learn to be more flexible and open to different approaches that they don't find intuitively or experientially appealing. John At 01:22 PM 1/31/2011, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: From: Krassimir Markov Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 2:13 AM To:fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] Info Theory  Dear Colleagues,  In the beginning of the XX-th century (approximately 100 years ago!) the great Bulgarian poet Pencho Slaveikov wrote:  "The speaker doesn't deliver his thought to the listener, but his sounds and performances provoke the thought of the listener.  Between them performs a process like lighting the candle, where the flame of the first candle is not transmitted to another flame,  but only cause it."   >From my point of view, this is the essence of the Info Theory and, especially, of the Communication Theory.  Really, nothing is transferred but everything CAUSE our mind to âlightâ.  âInformationâ is a human concept. Please ask your dog or cat, or the birds around, what is the information? No answer. But they really âthinkâ as us.  Every live creature reacts to the external influences and this cause internal activity in the brain, in the cells of our body, etc.  Internal activity cause both new internal and external activity of our organism.  Our external activity cause reactions in the live creatures around, and so on ...  Not only. Our organism is variety of sub-systems, live sub-systems, and they act the same way, etc. .  At the end, what is the information?  A kind of reflection (result of the influence), which cause our internal activity.  In the same time, such kind of reflection may exists at the lower layers of our organism. This way, we may say, there is information at these layers. More, by analogy, we may say there is information in every living creature.  But only humans call it âinformationâ and try to measure it. Of course, in such case we will measure everything, but not the âinformationâ itself.  Because the internal activity closely depends of individuals and internal structure of the brain and configuration of neurons. The same we may say for the internal structure of the cells ...  Friendly regards Krassimir  ----------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis Professor John Collier, Acting HoS and Acting Deputy HoS colli...@ukzn.ac.za Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 http://collier.ukzn.ac.za/ -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554 pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ -------------------------------------------------
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