Hi Jerry, Thank you for your comments and questions. Also apologies for late response but I was on a trip.
As for your question about cycles, actions can certainly be modeled as graphs that include cycles. We restricted our characterization to trees because: a) cycles can imply infinite loops that in our opinion are not appropriate to model human actions b) even considering cycles a set of actions can still be modeled a as a tree, so we consider that loops add unnecessary complexity to the model Furthermore, we understand the products of cyclic social processes like methods and procedures as technologies that embed information. All in all, we agree that a characterization of graphs can be useful to quantify information embedded in artifacts. Regards, Luis de Marcos Ortega Dpto Ciencias de la Computación Computer Science Department Universidad de Alcalá University of Alcalá http://www.uah.es/pdi/luis_demarcos "Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Ambrose G. Bierce. From: Fis [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jerry LR Chandler Sent: jueves, 23 de julio de 2015 17:02 To: FIS Science <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Fis] Information Foundation of the Act--F.Flores & L.deMarcos List: This comment is restricted to the proposed use of mathematical structures in context of the social. The mathematical structure of a tree is restricted by the notion of a cycle. A tree is readily converted into a cycle by simply adding a new edge between leaves or joints. The simple logic of a tree is lost by including cyclic relations. It appears to me that the rhetorical arguments may include inferences requiring cycle relations. What would be the nature of the inferences if the hypotheses allowed for cyclic social processes, such as learning on the basis of annual agricultural or hunting cycles? Cheers Jerry
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