Dear Karl and FIS colleagues, Yes, the Number Theory is very important basis! But, I think, there is no need to number every word. Because ... All words are already numbered We have published large monograph named “Natural Language Addressing” where we outlined this idea and presented the mathematical model and computer implementation for very large volumes of data (BigData). One can read it at http://foibg.com/ibs_isc/ibs-33/ibs-33.htm. The idea is very simple – every letter has its own code and in the computer we enter not letters but their codes. This way every word is a number in any positional numbering system. It really works!!! Friendly greetings Krassimir
From: Karl Javorszky
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 8:36 PM
To: Stanley N Salthe
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on the
cateogry theory
Using the logical language to understand Nature
The discussion in this group refocuses on the meaning of the terms “symbol”,
“signal”, “marker” and so forth. This is a very welcome development, because
understanding the tools one uses is usually helpful when creating great works.
There is sufficient professional literature on epistemology, logical languages
and the development of philosophy into specific sub-philosophies. The following
is just an unofficial opinion, maybe it helps.
Wittgenstein has created a separate branch within philosophy by investigating
the structure and the realm of true sentences. For this, he has been mocked and
ridiculed by his colleagues. Adorno, e.g. said that Wittgenstein had
misunderstood the job of a philosopher: to chisel away on the border that
separates that what can be explained and that what is opaque; not to elaborate
about how one can express truths that are anyway self-evident and cannot be
otherwise.
The Wittgenstein set of logical sentences are the rational explanation of the
world. That, which we can communicate about, we only can communicate about,
because both the words and what they mean are self-referencing. It is true that
nothing ever new, hair-raising or surprising can come out of a logical
discussion modi Wittgenstein, because every participant can only point out
truths that are factually true, and these have always been true. There is no
opportunity for discovery in rational thinking, only for an unveiling of that
what could have been previously known: like an archaeologist can not be
surprised about a finding, he can only be surprised about himself, how he had
been able to ignore the possibility of the finding so long.
As the Wittgenstein collection uses only such concepts that are well-defined,
these concepts can be easily enumerated. In effect, his results show, that if
one uses well-formulated, clearly defined logical words, the collection of all
explanations is the solution of a combinatorial problem. This is also the
reason why he says that his philosophy is just a tool of sharpening the brain,
and contains nothing whatsoever noteworthy in a semantic fashion.
One may summarise that the pariah state among philosophers that Wittgenstein
suffered on this his insight, is owed to the conclusion that real philosophy
has either nothing to do with the grammar of true logical sentences or
otherwise it is degenerating into a technique outside philosophy, namely number
theory. If every concept can be represented by a number, and valid sentence are
those for which the rules that govern numbers are satisfied, then one can work
with the numbers as such and figure out later for what they stand.
This is the situation as per today. There is no change whatsoever. The only
noteworthy development is, that one can indeed teach new tricks to that old
dog, number theory. The sand that has to be swiped away is the covering layer
of attitudes that are too clever by half. By keeping the nose not too high, one
may look before one’s feet and reconsider simple operations that one executes
by routine.
We know how to sort and how to order, and we are intelligent and flexible
enough to change priorities if circumstances dictate such. We know how to order
and how to reorder. If we only had a brain like a computer, we could memorise
all the patterns that appear as we transform from priority readiness One into
priority readiness Two.
There are many opportunities for number theory to jump into action in the field
of organising and reorganising. As one intensifies one’s hobby of reordering
the contents of one’s office, one will now have arrived at the concept of
sequenced groups of elements that change place together during a reorder.
Cycles that constitute a reorder connect elements with each other. Learning is
based on the concept of associations. Being an element in the corpus of a cycle
may well be the formal explanation for a property of being associated with.
Whether one calls the elements’ {position, amount, sequential place, relation
to potential successors, …} {symbol, signal, mass, impact, chemical valence,
predictability, energy level, information content,…} is of secondary
importance. As we look into a kaleidoscope, the first step is to make sure that
we all look at a kaleidoscope, and preferably the same one. The next task is to
make sure that we all perceive the same picture. As the kaleidoscope produces
natural numbers, this should be a challenge that one can be expected to match.
Only after it has been agreed that we all observe the same patterns is it
reasonable to start discussing how to name the facts of perception.
The present problem is not with the inability of the logical language to
process that what we wish to discuss. The present task is to realise that one
needs a clear idea before one enters the struggle to express it clearly. The
unveiling has been done. Now the interested public is invited to look at the
picture.
Once one has answered the dilemma: “On Tuesdays, this here cup is to the left
of the screen, because Tuesdays I order things on their colour; on Wednesdays
the same cup is to the right of the screen for its size, because on Wednesdays
I order things on their size: so, which is the correct place of this cup,
actually?”; once on has figured this out – that namely the cup would be
oscillating between its two places, or take up a position on a plane with axes:
colour, size -, then one has done great strides towards understanding that
“symbol”, “sign”, “signal” etc. are surface concepts, while the underlying deep
concepts have to do with sequencing and the mechanics of re-sequencing, which
means cycles, rhythms and periodicities.
We all know that the DNA is a sequence. Then, if one wants to understand how
the DNA functions, one had better resign to the fact that one has to deal with
sequences, whether one likes the topic or not. As there can be nothing
philosophically new in the explanation of how the DNA works, the only subject
that needs investigation is, why one has such a reticence to deal with places,
priorities, rankings, order, first and last becoming last and first, etc. Maybe
the door to the edifice of insights on how the interplay between mixtures and
sequences actually works and what this interplay produces; maybe this door
opens from a well-barricaded corridor within the cellar of the sub-conscious,
hidden among some skeletons of {to have sunken low, defeats of self-esteem, to
have been downgraded, to be among the last, to be a low-ranking individual,
etc.}. One of the techniques of influencing people with low self-esteem is to
encourage them to find the discipline in which they are really good. In how
many ways can a person be classified and how many of these ranking results are
contradictory? Is the concept of cognitive dissonance linked to the similarity
of two orders? Number theory should jump onto the subject of intermediate
states between two differing permutations, as it is intimately connected with
the subject of how DNA functions. Which names fit best the patterns we observe
while doing manifold re-orderings is presently of a secondary importance. Of
primary importance is presently to observe, what happens if a sequence is
turned into a different sequence. After all, we deal with sequences, don’t we.
2018-02-10 16:24 GMT+01:00 Stanley N Salthe <ssal...@binghamton.edu>:
Xueshan -- I think one can condense some of your insights hierarchically, as:
In a system having language, information seemingly may be obtained in other
ways as well. It would be a conceptually broader category. Thus (using the
compositional hierarchy):
[information [language [signal]]]
Meaning that, when a system has language, all information will be understood
or construed by way of linguistic constructs.
(Here I am using ‘signal’ as being more specific than Peirce’s ‘sign’, where:
[sign [information [...]]] )
Then, more dynamically (using the subsumptive hierarchy):
{language {signal {information}}}
Information in a languaged system is derived by way linguistic formations, so
that, even though it is an extremely broad category, information (informing)
only emerges by way of linguistically informed transformations.
STAN
On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 3:21 AM, Xueshan Yan <y...@pku.edu.cn> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
I have read the article "The languages of bacteria" which Gordana
recommended, and has gained a lot of inspiration from it. In combination with
Sung's comparative linguistics exploration on cell language and human language,
I have the following learning feelings to share with everyone:
In this article, the author recognized that bacteria have evolved multiple
languages for communicating within and between species. Intra- and interspecies
cell-cell communication allows bacteria to coordinate various biological
activities in order to behave like multicellular organisms. Such as AI-2, it is
a general language that bacteria use for intergenera signaling.
I found an interesting phenomenon in this paper: the author use the concept
information 3 times but the concept signal (signal or signaling) 55 times, so
we have to review the history and application of “information” and “signal” in
biology and biochemistry, it is helpful for us to understand the relationship
between language, signal, and information.
The origin of the concept of signal (main the signal transduction) can be
traced back to the end of the 1970s. But until 1980, biochemist and
endocrinologist Martin Rodbell published an article titled: “The Role of
Hormone Receptors and GTP-Regulatory Proteins in Membrane Transduction" in
Nature, in this paper he used the "signal transduction" first time. Since then,
the research on signal transduction is popular in biology and biochemistry.
As for any information transmission system, if we pay more attention to its
transmission carrier instead of its transmission content, we are used to
employing "signal transmission" instead of "signal transduction". From the
tradition of the early use of information concept, the signal transduction
study of cells is only equivalent to the level of telecommunications before
1948. Outwardly, before the advent of Shannon's information theory, the central
issue of telecommunications is "signal" rather than "information". After that,
the central issue of telecommunications is "information" rather than "signal".
According to the application history of information concept, nearly all the
essential problems behind the concepts of communication, messenger, signal and
so on may be information problems. Just as the language problem what we are
discussing here, our ultimate goal is to analyze the information.
For the same reason, I recommend another two papers:
1. Do Plants Think? (June 5, 2012, Scientific American)
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz/#rd?sukey=fc78a68049a14bb24ce82efd8ef931e64057ce6142b1f2f7b919612d2b3f42c07f559f5be33be0881613ccfbf5b43c4b）
2. Plants Can Think, Feel and Learn (December 3, 2014, New Scientist)
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429980-400-root-intelligence-plants-can-think-feel-and-learn)
From which we can judge whether or not a plants informatics can exists.
Best wishes,
Xueshan
From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On
Behalf Of Sungchul Ji
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 9:10 PM
To: Francesco Rizzo <13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>; Terrence W. DEACON
<dea...@berkeley.edu>
Cc: Fis, <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on
the cateogry theory
Hi Terry, and FISers,
Can it be that "language metaphor" is akin to a (theoretical) knife that,
in the hands of a surgeon, can save lives but, in a wrong hand, can kill?
All the best.
Sung
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Francesco Rizzo <13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 2:56:11 AM
To: Terrence W. DEACON
Cc: Fis,; Sungchul Ji
Subject: Re: [Fis] The unification of the theories of information based on
the cateogry theory
Caro Terry estensibile a tutti,
è sempre un piacere leggerTi e capirTi. La general theory of information è
preceduta da un sistema (o semiotica) di significazione e seguita da un sistema
(o semiotica ) di comunicazione. Tranne che quando si ha un processo
comunicativo come il passaggio di un Segnale (che non significa necessariamente
'un segno') da una Fonte, attraverso un Trasmettitore, lungo un Canale, a un
Destinatario. In un processo tra macchina e macchina il segnale non ha alcun
potere 'significante'. In tal caso non si ha significazione anche se si può
dire che si ha passaggio di informazione. Quando il destinatario è un essere
umano (e non è necessario che la fonte sia anch'essa un essere umano) si è in
presenza di un processo di significazione. Un sistema di significazione è una
costruzione semiotica autonoma, indipendente da ogni possibile atto di
comunicazione che l'attualizzi. Invece ogni processo di comunicazione tra
esseri umani -- o tra ogni tipo di apparato o struttura 'intelligente, sia
meccanico che biologico, -- presuppone un sistema di significazione come
propria o specifica condizione. In conclusione, è possibile avere una semiotica
della significazione indipendente da una semiotica della comunicazione; ma è
impossibile stabilire una semiotica della comunicazione indipendente da una
semiotica della significazione.
Ho appreso molto da Umberto Eco a cui ho dedicato il capitolo 10. Umberto
Eco e il processo di re-interpretazione e re-incantamento della scienza
economica (pp. 175-217) di "Valore e valutazioni. La scienza dell'economia o
l'economia della scienza" (FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1997). Nello mio stesso libro
si trovano:
- il capitolo 15. Semiotica economico-estimativa (pp. 327-361) che si
colloca nel quadro di una teoria globale di tutti i sistemi di significazione e
i processi di comunicazione;
- il sottoparagrafo 5.3.3 La psicologia genetica di Jean Piaget e la
neurobiologia di Humberto Maturana e Francesco Varela. una nuova epistemologia
sperimentale della qualità e dell'unicità (pp. 120-130).
Chiedo scusa a Tutti se Vi ho stancati o se ancora una volta il mio
scrivere in lingua italiana Vi crea qualche problema. Penso che il dono che mi
fate è, a proposito della QUALITA' e dell'UNICITA', molto più grande del
(per)dono che Vi chiedo. Grazie.
Un saluto affettuoso.
Francecso
2018-02-07 23:02 GMT+01:00 Terrence W. DEACON <dea...@berkeley.edu>:
Dear FISers,
In previous posts I have disparaged using language as the base model for
building a general theory of information.
Though I realize that this may seem almost heretical, it is not a claim
that all those who use linguistic analogies are wrong, only that it can be
causally misleading.
I came to this view decades back in my research into the neurology and
evolution of the human language capacity.
And it became an orgnizing theme in my 1997 book The Symbolic Species.
Early in the book I describe what I (and now other evolutionary
biologists) have come to refer to as a "porcupine fallacy" in evolutionary
thinking.
Though I use it to critique a misleading evolutionary taxonomizing
tendency, I think it also applies to biosemiotic and information theoretic
thinking as well.
So to exemplify my reasoning (with apologies for quoting myself) I append
the following excerpt from the book.
"But there is a serious problem with using language as the model for
analyzing other
species’ communication in hindsight. It leads us to treat every other
form of communication as
exceptions to a rule based on the one most exceptional and divergent
case. No analytic method
could be more perverse. Social communication has been around for as long
as animals have
interacted and reproduced sexually. Vocal communication has been around
at least as long as frogs
have croaked out their mating calls in the night air. Linguistic
communication was an afterthought,
so to speak, a very recent and very idiosyncratic deviation from an
ancient and well-established
mode of communicating. It cannot possibly provide an appropriate model
against which to assess
other forms of communication. It is the rare exception, not the rule, and
a quite anomalous
exception at that. It is a bit like categorizing birds’ wings with
respect to the extent they possess or
lack the characteristics of penguins’ wings, or like analyzing the types
of hair on different mammals
with respect to their degree of resemblance to porcupine quills. It is an
understandable
anthropocentric bias—perhaps if we were penguins or porcupines we might
see more typical wings
and hair as primitive stages compared to our own more advanced
adaptations—but it does more to
obfuscate than clarify. Language is a derived characteristic and so
should be analyzed as an
exception to a more general rule, not vice versa."
Of course there will be analogies to linguistic forms.
This is inevitable, since language emerged from and is supported by a
vast nonlinguistic semiotic infrastructure.
So of course it will inherit much from less elaborated more fundamental
precursors.
And our familiarity with language will naturally lead us to draw insight
from this more familiar realm.
I just worry that it provides an elaborate procrustean model that assumes
what it endeavors to explain.
Regards to all, Terry
On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:04 AM, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
<javierwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
In principle I agree with Terry. I have been thinking of this, though I
am still not able to make a sound formulation of the idea. Still I am afraid
that if I miss the chance to make at least a brief formulation of it I will
lose the opportunity to make a brainstorming with you. So, here it comes:
I have been thinking that a proper way to distinguish the contexts in
which the concept of information acquires a fixed meaning or the many contexts
on which information can be somehow observed, is to make use of the distinction
between medium and form as developed by N. Luhmann, D. Baecker and E. Esposito.
I have already expressed my opinion in this group that what information is
depends on the system we are talking about. But the concept of medium is more
especific since a complex system ussualy has many sources and types of
information.
So the authors just mentioned, a medium can be broadly defined as a set
of loosely coupled elements. No matter what they are. While a Form is a
temporary fixed coupling of a limited configuration of those elements.
Accordingly, we can be talking about DNA sequences which are selected by RNA to
form proteins or to codify a especific instruction to a determinate cell. We
can think of atoms forming a specific kind of matter and a specific kind of
molecular structure. We can also think of a vocabulary or a set of linguistic
conventions making possible a meaningful utterance or discourse.
The idea is that the medium conditions what can be treated as
information. Or even better, each type of medium produces information of its
own kind.
According to this point of view, information cannot be transmitted. It
can only be produced and "interpreted" out of the specific difference that a
medium begets between itself and the forms that take shape from it. A medium
can only be a source of noise to other mediums. Still, media can couple among
them. This means that media can selforganize in a synergetic manner, where they
depend on each others outputs or complexity reductions. And this also mean that
they do this by translating noise into information. For instance, language is
coupled to writing, and language and writing to print. Still oral communication
is noisy to written communication. Let us say that the gestures, emotions,
entonations, that we make when talking cannot be copied as such into writing.
In a similar way, all the social practices and habits made by handwriting were
distorted by the introduction of print. From a technical point of view you can
codify the same message orally, by writing and by print. Still information and
meaning are not the same. You can tell your girlfriend you love her. That
interaction face to face where the lovers look into each others eye, where they
can see if the other is nervous, is trembling or whatever. Meaning (declaring
love and what that implies: marriage, children, and so on) and information (he
is being sincere, she can see it in his eye; he brought her to a special place,
so he planned it, and so on) take a very singular and untranslatable
configuration. If you write a letter you just can say "I love you". You shall
write a poem or a love letter. Your beloved would read it alone in her room and
she would have to imagine everything you say. And imagination makes
information and meaning to articulate quite differently as in oral
communication. It is not the same if you buy a love card in the kiosk and send
it to her. Maybe you compensate the simplicity of your message by adding some
chocolates and flowers. Again, information (jumm, lets see what he bought her)
and meaning are not the same. I use examples of social sciences because that is
my research field, although I have the intuition that it could also work for
natural sciences.
Best,
JJ
El feb 7, 2018 10:47 AM, "Sungchul Ji" <s...@pharmacy.rutgers.edu>
escribió:
Hi FISers,
On 10/8/2017, Terry wrote:
" So basically, I am advocating an effort to broaden our discussions
and recognize that the term information applies in diverse ways to many
different contexts. And because of this it is important to indicate the
framing, whether physical, formal, biological, phenomenological, linguistic,
etc.
. . . . . . The classic syntax-semantics-pragmatics distinction
introduced by Charles Morris has often been cited in this respect, though it
too is in my opinion too limited to the linguistic paradigm, and may be
misleading when applied more broadly. I have suggested a parallel, less
linguistic (and nested in Stan's subsumption sense) way of making the division:
i.e. into intrinsic, referential, and normative analyses/properties of
information."
I agree with Terry's concern about the often overused linguistic
metaphor in defining "information". Although the linguistic metaphor has its
limitations (as all metaphors do), it nevertheless offers a unique advantage as
well, for example, its well-established categories of functions (see the last
column in Table 1.)
The main purpose of this post is to suggest that all the varied
theories of information discussed on this list may be viewed as belonging to
the same category of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation) diagrammatically
represented as the 3-node closed network in the first column of Table 1.
Table 1. The postulated universality of ITR (Irreducible
Triadic Relation) as manifested in information theory, semiotics, cell language
theory, and linguistics.
Category Theory
f g
A -----> B ------> C
| ^
| |
|______________|
h
ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation)
Deacon’s theory of information
Shannon’s
Theory of
information
Peirce’s theory of signs
Cell language theory
Human language
(Function)
A
Intrinsic information
Source
Object
Nucleotides*/
Amion acids
Letters
(Building blocks)
B
Referential information
Message
Sign
Proteins
Words
(Denotation)
C
Normative information
Receiver
Interpretant
Metabolomes
(Totality of cell metabolism)
Systems of words
(Decision making & Reasoning)
f
?
Encoding
Sign production
Physical laws
Second articulation
g
?
Decoding
Sign interpretation
Evoutionary selection
First and Third articulation
h
?
Information flow
Information flow
Inheritance
Grounding/
Habit
Scale
Micro-Macro?
Macro
Macro
Micro
Macro
*There may be more than one genetic alphabet of 4 nucleotides.
According to the "multiple genetic alphabet hypothesis', there are n genetic
alphabets, each consisting of 4^n letters, each of which in turn consisting of
n nucleotides. In this view, the classical genetic alphabet is just one
example of the n alphabets, i.e., the one with n = 1. When n = 3, for example,
we have the so-called 3rd-order genetic alphabet with 4^3 = 64 letters each
consisting of 3 nucleotides, resulting in the familiar codon table. Thus, the
64 genetic codons are not words as widely thought (including myself until
recently) but letters! It then follows that proteins are words and metabolic
pathways are sentences. Finally, the transient network of metbolic pathways
(referred to as "hyperstructures" by V. Norris in 1999 and as "hypermetabolic
pathways" by me more recently) correspond to texts essential to represent
arguement/reasoning/computing. What is most exciting is the recent discovery
in my lab at Rutgers that the so-called "Planck-Shannon plots" of mRNA levels
in living cells can identify function-dependent "hypermetabolic pathways"
underlying breast cancer before and after drug treatment (manuscript under
review).
Any comments, questions, or suggestions would be welcome.
Sung
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Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
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