Thanks for that Pedro, Just a few comments. All the best,
Christophe ________________________________ De : Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> de la part de Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> Envoyé : lundi 13 novembre 2017 14:30 À : 'fis' Objet : [Fis] some notes Dear All, Herewith some notes on the exchanges of past weeks (sorry, I was away in bureaucratic tasks). 1. Agents & Information. There were very good insights exchanged; probably both terms make a fertile marriage. Actually I have been writing about "informational entities" or "subjects" as receivers/builders of information but taking into account the other disciplines around, "agents" look as the most natural companion of information. The only thing I don't quite like is that they usually appear as abstract, disembodied communicative entities that do not need self-producing. Their communication is free from whatever life maintenance... Yes, agents naturally go with information as they are the source of meaning generation, of sense making. Agents can be organic, human and artificial. (I look at agents as identifyable entities submitted to internal constraints and capable of actions for the satisfaction of the constraints). Artificial agents can be looked at as disembodied but their being is derived from our human ones. So their self (if any) is part of the human designer's self. 2. Eigenvectors of communication. Taking the motif from Loet, and continuing with the above, could we say that the life cycle itself establishes the eigenvectors of communication? It is intriguing that maintenance, persistence, self-propagation are the essential motives of communication for whatever life entities (from bacteria to ourselves). With the complexity increase there appear new, more sophisticated directions, but the basic ones probably remain intact. What could be these essential directions of communication? Perhaps it could be interesting here to highlight that physics/chemistry and biology/psychology cannot address information the same way. Physics and chemistry use tools with precise definitions allowing to model our environment in a deterministic and predictable way (QM and Chaos deserving more investigations). Biology/psychology do not benefit of such rigorous mathematical support. We do not even know how to define life or consciousness, and our models are incomplete. So what about separating the two domains and looking at their relations as a third domain? 1) Thermodynamics, entropy, quantity of information, channel capacity, data transmission. 2) Meaning generation, biology and self-consciousness 3) Emergence and locality of constraints, emergence of meanings This puts again the focus on meaning generation, a key evolutionary step without which we would not be here. Also, let's not forget that data transmission and quantification of information are about meaningful information. So why not consider internal constraint satisfaction, the source of meaning generation, as an essential direction of communication? 3. About logics in the pre-science, Joseph is quite right demanding that discussion to accompany principles or basic problems. Actually principles, rules, theories, etc. are interconnected or should be by a logic (or several logics?) in order to give validity and coherence to the different combinations of elements. For instance, in the biomolecular realm there is a fascinating interplay of activation and inhibition among the participating molecular partners (enzymes and proteins) as active elements. I am not aware that classical ideas from Jacob (La Logique du vivant) have been sufficiently continued; it is not about Crick's Central Dogma but about the logic of pathways, circuits, modules, etc. Probably both Torday and Ji have their own ideas about that-- I would be curious to hear from them. 4. I loved Michel's response to Arturo's challenge. I think that the two "zeros" I mentioned days ago (the unsolved themes around the cycle and around the observer) imply both multidisciplinary thinking and philosophical speculation... Best wishes--Pedro ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ [https://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/_/rsrc/1468865628625/home/DSC00254-1.JPG?height=420&width=346]<http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/> Pedro.C.Marijuan<http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/> sites.google.com Personal Webpage of Pedro C. Marijuán ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis Fis Info Page - unizar.es<http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis> listas.unizar.es The FIS initiative (Foundations of Information Science) started in 1994 with a first meeting in Madrid (organized by Michael Conrad and Pedro Marijuan), and was ...
_______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
