At 06:22 AM 13/06/2007, Pedro Marijuan wrote:
Dear FIS colleagues,
About the approaches to the information concept commented by Karl,
Loet, John, and Stan, let me argue that some of them have a rather
narrow conceptual domain of applicability. In Karl's approach I have
already argued that his highly suggestive conflation of the
sequential vs. the simultaneous in order to define formally
information should be accompanied by an agreeement (an in depth
discussion) of the technical problem on how to count
multidimensional partitions. Morris, Pastor, and me had found
years ago some discrepancy regarding the heuristic formula he has
developed ...a few things might be different, and perhaps even more
interesting. Well, it may seem strange, but Michael Leyton's
approach based on group theory could be in close vicinity of the
formal structures in Karl's. Anyhow, the pitty is that discussimg
this on the Internet is a pain of the neck (we should have had a
small ad hoc seminar during the Paris conference!).
My student Scott Muller, who completed his PhD recently on just this
topic, was at the Paris meeting. His worked was praised by examiners
Larry Sklar, Phil Hanson and Louis Kaufmann, all of whom have a long
history dealing with information theory and statistical mechanics. It
is being published by Springer, I believe. To bad he didn't get a
chance to speak up more.
My 1986 paper, Entropy in Evolution, in the first issue of Biology
and Philosophy, shows a way to define information in multidimensional
physical systems I called 'arrays' to capture the statistical
fluctuations of information at lower levels. I define a physical
information system in terms of these arrays. I've had some minor
criticism (Sarkar), but he backed off when I explained in more detail.
My own track is based on the need to accomodate quite many new
observations, mostly in molecular biology neuroscience, that
cannot be situated within the existing conceptualizations, apart
from leaving the immediate problem of meaning in the dark,
concerning its biological-material underpinng. So I proposed last
year, in this list, exploring the scope of an alternative
conceptualization of information as distinction on the adjacent...
given that both terms are too heavily loaded, I stop here and leave
the matter for future discussions (of course, the underlying
reflection is that it is far more than a single concept what we are
trying to clarify during all these years in this list: the quest for
a consistent new perspective or disciplinary body around information).
Meaning is a really tricky problem, and I now believe it requires
semiotics to resolve.
Cheers,
John
--
We're just fighting at a number of levels here against a number of
different enemies,
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker
Professor John Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html?personal/collier
Cybernetics Human Knowing http://www.imprint-academic.com/CHK
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