I must start with an apology for my absence from the email list. I have overcome most of the distractions that were in the way, and I return to see the best energy I recall in the group. I wish I had been in Beijing, but I was helping with another meeting at the same time.Now, I hope to plan a trip soon.
Let me start by responding to some points of our Chinese colleagues, starting in reverse order. I am truly impressed by Zhao‘s email. FIS discussions have a challenge that is rare: we know that the FIS agenda forces us to re-examine the notion of meaning as described in logical terms, and yet in doing so we fall back on logic-based arguments. Some of these have been going on here for a decade now. It is clear to me that a new science (of the kind we need) will involve the addition of new logical tools. Also, it will involve encountering the world as it is, not just the parts that seem to fit logic, whether naturally logical or not. Elsewhere. I’ve mentioned our work in two-sorted logic based on situation theory. The “second sort” has interesting soft characteristics. Among them is the notion of narrative assembly, what Koichiro calls the tense mode. In my work, this has required rather deep involvement in information density and transfer by analogic means: yes, poetry. This deserves as much a place in the second sort as all the maneuvers of semiotics and entropy do in the first sort. A “streak” in this context is more than human to human conveyance or at least I see it so. Said another way: part of what we do here is extend abstractions: biological self-organization to general systems: Peirciean semiotics to components of life; negentropic probability as a structural imperative. If we allow that, surely we should allow extending abstractions from how we structure information cognitively. Back to the previous session that I missed and Yixin‘s hefty post. It is motivated by the same dynamic, in my mind. Information — the way most of us think of it — is packetized and transferred in ways that bind logic and physics as John has pointed out. For better or worse this was set by the school of Aristotle and we are stuck with it (as James has noted). Intelligence on the other hand can be seen as situated, structured, received information (or the product of same). Yixin’s proposal is remarkable, and it is no wonder that it has unsettled a few. I endorse it wholeheartedly. I have a minor quibble with some details in the preamble; I believe that the characterization of the “three schools” though historically correct could be better framed differently. (I can elaborate later.) But that does not affect the proposal. I’ll observe here my tendency to think of: information -> knowledge -> intelligence as abstractions -> cognition -> situated structure with causal potential, The first (“abstractions“) are qualified with reference to Jerry's observation that different domains use different abstract sets and therefore the rest of the food chain similarly differs. The last (“situated structure with causal potential“) is colored by Soren’s patient insistence on the importance of an extended concept of perception and qualia. Forgive me for revisiting a closed session, but it bears on Zhao’s email and the two together reinforce each other in a powerful way. If Yixin’s proposal was an information-centric approach to the problem of information and intelligence, Zhao’s was an intelligence-centric approach to the same problem. That brings me to the current session. I too have studied in some depth the influence of medieval institutions, in my case following the development of geometric cosmologies, primarily in mysticism, which fed one of the schools of physics — the one based on symmetry. I find it interesting that the discussions on the history of science are all on the western side. Now, I don’t want to artificially concoct a convenient dual Asian tradition, and I will defer to the Chinese participants. But it is my experience that there is every bit as well developed tradition of reasoning about nature in the sino-indo world. We ignore it at great cost because its mere existence is proof of von Neumann’s conjecture of manifold logics. In particular, my Japanese colleagues have trustworthy intuitions on the nature of situations as contrasted with those of facts, which Westerners are more acculturated to. Their methods are so strong that I have conflated to associations with the two sorts (a logic over facts, and a categoric calculus over situations). So, I propose to revive Yixin’s proposal, as combined with Zhao’s perspective and suggest that we give fair attention to the many fresh perspectives they bring to this group. On Mar 3, 2011, at 12:58 AM, Beth Cardier wrote: > Dear Professor Zhao and FISers, > > Thanks to Pedro for reposting Dr Zhao’s message. Through some complication > of multiple email systems, I didn’t see it the first time. > > For those who don’t already know, my name is Beth Cardier and I’m > completing research at the University of Melbourne, developing a > computer-friendly model of narrative structure so that knowledge systems > might eventually interpret unexpected information. I’m in the unusual > position of having an arts background (I’m a writer) and was later trained > to consider formal issues of information, for the purposes of system > design. This swerve in career was the result of involvement in a US > project, which aimed to address fundamental problems with computer > reasoning. That program was run by Ted Goranson, who is also a member of > this forum, and will likely comment soon. _____ Ted Goranson tedgoran...@mac.com http://www.sirius-beta.com _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
