Cari Joseph, Loet, Pedro e Terry, Cari tutti,
grazie per le Vostre parole che ap-prezzo "molto", ma merito "poco". Ricchi
come siamo o siete di anni di giovinezza dobbiamo o dovete coltivare ed
usare la massima sapienza saggia o saggezza sapiente in modo da essere
garanzia onto-logica o memoria paradigmatica che non impedisca, ma stimoli
la creatività scientifica o la passione conoscitiva di coloro che avendo
meno anni di giovinezza proiettano nel futuro con le loro profezie o
rivelazioni l'interminabile e fecondo cammino della conoscenza.della
conoscenza. Beninteso, con la co-scienza dell'amore o l'amore della
co-scienza, perché la scienza da sola non ce la fa!
Che il 2017 sia un anno buono per colmare le nostre lacune. Insieme.
Francesco
2016-12-31 8:15 GMT+01:00 Loet Leydesdorff <l...@leydesdorff.net>:
> We agree that such a theory is a ways off, though you some are far more
> pessimisitic about its possibility than me. I believe that we would do best
> to focus on the hole that needs filling in rather than assuming that it is
> an unfillable given.
>
>
>
> Dear Terrence and colleagues,
>
>
>
> It is not a matter of pessimism. We have the example of “General Systems
> Theory” of the 1930s (von Bertalanffy and others). Only gradually, one
> realized the biological metaphor driving it. In my opinion, we have become
> reflexively skeptical about claims of “generality” because we know the
> statements are framed within paradigms. Translations are needed in this
> fractional manifold.
>
>
>
> I agree that we are moving in a fruitful direction. Your book “Incomplete
> Nature” and “The Symbolic Species” have been important. The failing options
> cannot be observed, but have to be constructed culturally, that is, in
> discourse. It seems to me that we need a kind of calculus of redundancy.
> Perspectives which are reflexively aware of this need and do not assume an
> unproblematic “given” or “natural” are perhaps to be privileged
> nonetheless. The unobservbable options have first to be specified and we
> need theory (hypotheses) for this. Perhaps, this epistemological privilege
> can be used as a vantage point.
>
>
>
> There is an interesting relation to Husserl’s *Critique of the European
> Sciences* (1935): The failing (or forgotten) dimension is grounded in
> “intersubjective intentionality.” Nowadays, we would call this “discourse”.
> How are discourses structured and how can they be translated for the
> purpose of offering this “foundation”?
>
>
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
> My modest suggestion is only that in the absence of a unifying theory we
> should not privilege one partial theory over others and that in the absence
> of a global general theory we need to find terminology that clearly
> identifies the level at which the concept is being used. Lacking this, we
> end up debating incompatible definitions, and defending our favored one
> that either excludes or includes issues of reference and significance or
> else assumes or denies the relevance of human interpreters. With different
> participants interested in different levels and applications of the
> information concept—from physics, to computation, to neuroscience, to
> biosemiotics, to language, to art, etc.—failure to mark this diversity will
> inevitably lead us in circles.
>
>
>
> I urge humility with precision and an eye toward synthesis.
>
>
>
> Happy new year to all.\
>
>
>
> — Terry
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Dai Griffiths <dai.griffith...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Thanks Stan,
>
> Yes, it's a powerful and useful process.
>
> My problem is that in this list, and in other places were such matters are
> discussed, we don't seem to be able to agree on the big picture, and the
> higher up the generalisations we go, the less we agree.
>
> I'd like to keep open the possibility that we might be yoking ideas
> together which it may be more useful to keep apart. We are dealing with
> messy concepts in messy configurations, which may not always map neatly
> onto a generalisation model.
>
> Dai
>
>
>
> On 22/12/16 16:45, Stanley N Salthe wrote:
>
> Dai --
>
> {phenomenon 1}
>
> {phenomenon 2} --> {Phenomena 1 & 2} ---> {phenomena 1.2,3}
>
> {phenomenon 3}
>
> The process from left to right is generalization.
>
> ‘Information’ IS a generalization.
>
> generalities form the substance of philosophy. Info happens to a case
>
> of generalization which can be mathematized, which in turn allows
>
> it to be generalized even more.
>
> So, what’s the problem?
>
> STAN
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 7:44 AM, Dai Griffiths <dai.griffith...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Information is not “something out there” which “exists” otherwise than
> as our construct.
>
> I agree with this. And I wonder to what extent our problems in discussing
> information come from our desire to shoe-horn many different phenomena into
> the same construct. It would be possible to disaggregate the construct. It
> be possible to discuss the topics which we address on this list without
> using the word 'information'. We could discuss redundancy, variety,
> constraint, meaning, structural coupling, coordination, expectation,
> language, etc.
>
> In what ways would our explanations be weakened?
>
> In what ways might we gain in clarity?
>
> If we were to go down this road, we would face the danger that our
> discussions might become (even more) remote from everyday human experience.
> But many scientific discussions are remote from everyday human experience.
>
> Dai
>
> On 20/12/16 08:26, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> A distribution contains uncertainty that can be measured in terms of bits
> of information.
>
> Alternatively: the expected information content *H *of a probability
> distribution is .
>
> *H* is further defined as probabilistic entropy using Gibb’s formulation
> of the entropy .
>
>
>
> This definition of information is an operational definition. In my
> opinion, we do not need an essentialistic definition by answering the
> question of “what is information?” As the discussion on this list
> demonstrates, one does not easily agree on an essential answer; one can
> answer the question “how is information defined?” Information is not
> “something out there” which “exists” otherwise than as our construct.
>
>
>
> Using essentialistic definitions, the discussion tends not to move
> forward. For example, Stuart Kauffman’s and Bob Logan’s (2007) definition
> of information “as natural selection assembling the very constraints on the
> release of energy that then constitutes work and the propagation of
> organization.” I asked several times what this means and how one can
> measure this information. Hitherto, I only obtained the answer that
> colleagues who disagree with me will be cited. J Another answer was that
> “counting” may lead to populism. J
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
> Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>
> Visiting Professor, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of
> London;
>
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>
>
>
> *From:* Dick Stoute [mailto:dick.sto...@gmail.com <dick.sto...@gmail.com>]
>
> *Sent:* Monday, December 19, 2016 12:48 PM
> *To:* l...@leydesdorff.net
> *Cc:* James Peters; u...@umces.edu; Alex Hankey; FIS Webinar
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] What is information? and What is life?
>
>
>
> List,
>
>
>
> Please allow me to respond to Loet about the definition of information
> stated below.
>
>
>
> 1. the definition of information as uncertainty is counter-intuitive
> ("bizarre"); (p. 27)
>
>
>
> I agree. I struggled with this definition for a long time before
> realising that Shannon was really discussing "amount of information" or the
> number of bits needed to convey a message. He was looking for a formula
> that would provide an accurate estimate of the number of bits needed to
> convey a message and realised that the amount of information (number of
> bits) needed to convey a message was dependent on the "amount" of
> uncertainty that had to be eliminated and so he equated these.
>
>
>
> It makes sense to do this, but we must distinguish between "amount of
> information" and "information". For example, we can measure amount of
> water in liters, but this does not tell us what water is and likewise the
> measure we use for "amount of information" does not tell us what
> information is. We can, for example equate the amount of water needed to
> fill a container with the volume of the container, but we should not think
> that water is therefore identical to an empty volume. Similarly we should
> not think that information is identical to uncertainty.
>
>
>
> By equating the number of bits needed to convey a message with the "amount
> of uncertainty" that has to be eliminated Shannon, in effect, equated
> opposites so that he could get an estimate of the number of bits needed to
> eliminate the uncertainty. We should not therefore consider that this
> equation establishes what information is.
>
>
>
> Dick
>
>
>
>
>
> On 18 December 2016 at 15:05, Loet Leydesdorff <l...@leydesdorff.net>
> wrote:
>
> Dear James and colleagues,
>
>
>
> Weaver (1949) made two major remarks about his coauthor (Shannon)'s
> contribution:
>
>
>
> 1. the definition of information as uncertainty is counter-intuitive
> ("bizarre"); (p. 27)
>
> 2. "In particular, information must not be confused with meaning." (p. 8)
>
>
>
> The definition of information as relevant for a system of reference
> confuses information with "meaningful information" and thus sacrifices the
> surplus value of Shannon's counter-intuitive definition.
>
>
>
> information observer
>
>
>
> that integrates interactive processes such as
>
>
>
> physical interactions such photons stimulating the retina of the eye,
> human-machine interactions (this is the level that Shannon lives on),
> biological interaction such body temperature relative to touch ice or heat
> source, social interaction such as this forum started by Pedro, economic
> interaction such as the stock market, ... [Lerner, page 1].
>
>
>
> We are in need of a theory of meaning. Otherwise, one cannot measure
> meaningful information. In a previous series of communications we discussed
> redundancy from this perspective.
>
>
>
> Lerner introduces mathematical expectation E[Sap] (difference between of a
> priory entropy [sic] and a posteriori entropy), which is distinguished from
> the notion of relative information Iap (Learner, page 7).
>
>
>
> ) expresses in bits of information the information generated when the a
> priori distribution is turned into the a posteriori one . This follows
> within the Shannon framework without needing an observer. I use this
> equation, for example, in my 1995-book *The Challenge of Scientometrics*
> (Chapters 8 and 9), with a reference to Theil (1972). The relative
> information is defined as the *H*/*H*(max).
>
>
>
> I agree that the intuitive notion of information is derived from the Latin
> “in-formare” (Varela, 1979). But most of us do no longer use “force” and
> “mass” in the intuitive (Aristotelian) sense. J The proliferation of the
> meanings of information if confused with “meaningful information” is
> indicative for an “index sui et falsi”, in my opinion. The repetitive
> discussion lames the progression at this list. It is “like asking whether a
> glass is half empty or half full” (Hayles, 1990, p. 59).
>
>
>
> This act of forming forming an information process results in the
> construction of an observer that is the owner [holder] of information.
>
>
>
> The system of reference is then no longer the message, but the observer
> who provides meaning to the information (uncertainty). I agree that this is
> a selection process, but the variation first has to be specified
> independently (before it can be selected.
>
>
>
> And Lerner introduces the threshold between objective and subjective
> observes (page 27). This leads to a consideration selection and
> cooperation that includes entanglement.
>
>
>
> I don’t see a direct relation between information and entanglement. An
> observer can be entangled.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
> PS. Pedro: Let me assume that this is my second posting in the week which
> ends tonight. L.
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
>
> Professor of Education
>
> School of Education and Psychology
>
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>
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>
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>
>
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> --
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
>
>
> Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
>
> Professor of Education
>
> School of Education and Psychology
>
> The University of Bolton
>
> Deane Road
>
> Bolton, BL3 5AB
>
>
>
> Office: T3 02
>
> http://www.bolton.ac.uk/IEC
>
>
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>
> UK Mobile +44 (0)7491151559 <+44%207491%20151559>
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> Spanish Mobile: + 34 687955912 <+34%20687%2095%2059%2012>
>
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>
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>
> email:
>
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>
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> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
>
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