Dear Pedro,
I and I am sure most of us are grateful when you "open up" the debate in this
way. To go farther, though, people must be ready to ask many questions about
familiar concepts such as the following:
1. Are there serious alternatives to Aristotelian causality?
2. Is it possible to combine insights from "Heraclitus" and "Parmenides" to get
the advantages of both in complex domains?
3. Can "non-mechanistic" thought be expressed in sufficiently rigorous terms to
avoid slipping into non-sense and non-science?
4. In reply to your "Why?", can an explanation of the refusal of people to
accept the necessary changes in mind-set be related to genetic + environmental
factors that also determine other doubtful polarizations (like voting for
Romney-Ryan) or criminal behavior?
As I have tried to express them in this forum from time to time in relation to
other issues, my answer to all the above questions is "yes". But it takes new
work and a new attitude. As a personal example, I have asked about 12 (!)
mathematicians to help me express the calculus of implications of my Logic in
Reality in alternative, more familiar terms. None has either done so nor said
that it is not possible.
As another example, after some effort, the first article in proper English by
Wu Kun of the Institute for the Philosophy of Information in Xi'An has just
been published on-line in Information. People who assume, however, that his
view of philosophy is not of critical importance to information science are
making just the kind of mistake Pedro tells us to avoid! It is a
metaphilosophy, a recasting of the underlying assumptions of scientific -
natural and social - thought in informational terms. I urge you all to look at
it.
Best wishes,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 10:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] The Information Flow
Dear FISers,
Is it interesting the discussion on whether those informational entities
contain realizations of the Aristotelian scheme of causality or not?
The cell, in my view, conspicuously fails --it would be too artifactual an
scheme. Some parts of the sensory paths of advanced nervous systems seem to
separate some of those causes --but only in a few parts or patches of the
concerned pathway. For instance, in visual processing the "what" and the
"how/where" seem to be travelling together undifferentiated along the optic
nerve and are separated --more or less-- after the visual superior colliculus
in the midbrain before discharging onto the visual cortex. The really big flow
of spikes arriving each instant (many millions every few milisec) are mixed and
correlated with themselves and with other top-down and bottom-up preexisting
flows in multiple neural mappings... and further, when those flows mix with the
association areas under the influence of language, then, and only then, all
those logic and conceptual categorizations of human thought are enacted in the
ephemeral synaptic networks.
I am optimistic that a new "Heraclitean" way of thinking boils down in network
science, neuroinformatics, systems biology, bioinformation etc. Neither the
"Parmenidean" eliminative fixism of classical reductionists, nor the
Aristotelian organicism of systemicists. Say that this is a caricature. However
"you cannot bathe twice in the same river" not just because we all are caught
into the universal physical flow of photons and forces, but for the
"Heraclitean flux" of our own neurons and brains, for the inner torrents of the
aggregated information flows. The same for whatever cells, societies, etc. and
their physical structures for info transportation.
Either we produce an interesting new vision of the world, finally making sense
of those perennial metaphors among the different (informational) realms, or
information science will continue to be that small portion of incoherent
patches more or less close to information theory or to artificial intelligence.
In spite of decades of bla-bla- about information revolution and information
society and tons of ad hoc literature, the educated thought of our contemporary
society continues to be deeply mechanistic!
Why?
best wishes
---Pedro
>
> -snip-
>
> I think it of some interest that I have
> previously ( 2006 On
> Aristotle’s conception of causality.
> General Systems Bulletin 35:
> 11.) proposed that the Aristotelian 'formal
> cause' determines both
> 'what happens' and 'how it happens', and that
> the combination of
> this with material cause ('what it happens
> to') delivers 'where' it
> happens.
>
> (For completeness sake I add that efficient
> cause determines only
> 'when it happens', while final cause points
> to 'why it happens'. It
> would be quite exciting to find that these
> informations were also
> carried on separate tracts.)
>
>
> It would be exciting, as that would seem to refute the
> Aristotelean idea
> of the four causes as four aspects of all causation. However an
> information channel can carry some part of the information from
> its
> source, which would be a sort of filter or abstraction of the
> source.
> So, for example, a channel might be sensitive only to the "how",
> but not
> the "what", and vice versa. A channel is fundamentally a mapping
> of
> classes from a source to a sink that through instances that
> retain the
> mapping (see Barwsie and Seligman, Information Flow: The Logic
> of
> Distributed Systems). So in this case, a channel sensitive to,
> say,
> "what", would retain the what classifications of the source in a
> way
> that the sink could use, but perhaps not any other information.
> The
> channels themselves could still maintain all four aspects of
> Aristotelean causation, so Aristotle need not be refuted. This
> would
> still be very interesting, though. I am unclear what functional
> advantage there would be, though we certainly manage to separate
> these
> causes in much of our thinking (perhaps even, we can't help it).
>
> Cheers,
> John
>
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