[Fis] Is information physical?

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear Arturo, 

 

Thank you very much for responding to my post (nobody else did not reacted
to the UCLA finding).

Even more thanks for directing me to the Neuroskeptic blog - the real
discussion about the UCLA finding took place only there. 

 

You are incorrect stating that the "paper about memory transfer has been
highly criticized". On the contrary, they are embarrassed by the finding and
by the crash it brings to the existing dogmas, but they are busy trying to
get an explanation, (and they cannot do this because they are deprived of
such critical things as a notion of information, and information
representation, and information processing). 

 

Nevertheless, they recall a similar case "citing evidence that 'naked' RNA
can become encapsulated inside packages called exosomes
  and that this could allow
them to enter cells". (I used this evidence to justify the idea of
information transfer among astrocytes and neurons, where information is
reified as a molecular text string).   

 

Never mind. Again, many thanks for paying attention to important recent
discoveries overlooked in FIS discussions.

 

Emanuel.

 

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[Fis] in a literal translation

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear all,

 

My name - Emanuel - in a literal translation means "God with us". 

Despite of that, for the purpose of our current discussion, I would like to
mention:

The external observer, which provide us with the needed semantic information
used (as a reference) for physical information interpretation, at the very
beginning was: or the Nature itself, or (more specific) the natural
evolution, or (even more specific) the natural selection.

Best regards,

Emanuel.

 

  

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Dr. Plamen L.
Simeonov
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2018 11:36 AM
To: Loet Leydesdorff
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Meta-observer?

 

I know him: his name is God, the meta-observer + meta-actor at the same
time.

Correct, Bruno?

;-)

 

best, Plamen

...

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Loet
Leydesdorff
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2018 9:53 AM
To: Koichiro Matsuno; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Meta-observer?

 

Dear Pedro, Koichiro, and colleagues,

 

At the level of observers, indeed, a hierarchy may be involved for the
change of focus (although this is empirical  and not necessarily the case).
The communication, however, as a system different from the communicators may
contain mechanisms such as "translation" which make it possible to redirect.


 

Best, Loet

 

--  

 

 

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[Fis] no intention to depart

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear Sung, Dear FIS colleagues, 

 

Greeting Sung's arguments in regard of information duality challenge, I had
no intention to depart from our current ongoing schedule - the discourse on
the John Torday's New Year Lecture. (That is why I am not responding and
will not respond to your comments).

 

I hope Pedro will take into consideration this spontaneous rise of interest
in the controversial (albeit crucially important) topic of information
duality.

 

Best regards to all,

Emanuel.

 

 

 

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[Fis] I salute to Sungchul

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FISers, 

 

I would like to express my pleasure with the current state of our discourse
- an evident attempt to reach a more common understanding about information
issues and to enrich preliminary given assessments. 

In this regard, I would like to add my comment to Sungchul's post of January
12, 2018. 

 

Sungchul proposes "to recognize two distinct types of information which, for
the lack of better terms, may be referred to as the "meaningless
information" or I(-)  and "meaningful information" or I(+)". 

That is exactly what I am trying to put forward for years, albeit under more
historically rooted names: Physical and Semantic information [1]. Never
mind, what is crucially important here is that the duality of information
becomes publicly recognized and accepted by FIS community.

 

I salute to Sungchul's suggestion!

 

Best regards, Emanuel.

 

[1] Emanuel Diamant, The brain is processing information, not data. Does
anybody care?, ISIS Summit Vienna 2015, Extended Abstract.
http://sciforum.net/conference/isis-summit-vienna-2015/paper/2842 

 

 

 

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[Fis] Social information, Sociotype

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear Pedro, Dear Fises,

 

I apologize, as usual, for intervening in your respected discussion. But in
my humble understanding, the genotype-phenotype-sociotype triad is simply a
list of behavioral forms (or types). Evidently, they all are endorsed and
inspired by the information that is in the disposal of every living being.
But from information point of view (and we are busy with information essence
quest) only two types of information are involved in a living being behavior
production: genetic information and epigenetic information. That is:
vertically exchanged inheritance information and horizontally exchanged
experience information. These two types of information are responsible for
the behavior of living beings at every known to us level of biological
organization: single cell - genotype, cell assembly or organism - phenotype,
groups of organisms or societies - sociotype.

Again, I apologize for invading your discussion, but we are busy with
information, aren't we?

 

Best regards, Emanuel.

 

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Re: [Fis] INVITATION TO WORLD SCIENTIFIC VOLUME ON THE STUDY OF INFORMATION

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear Gordana, 

I received your invitation letters (dated Nov. 5 and Nov. 1). However, I
think, I will not be able to accept your kind offer.

For the following reason: After the Vienna 2015 Summit, I was invited (by
MDPI Information journal) to submit an extended version of my conference
paper to the journal’s Special Issue:
<http://www.mdpi.com/journal/information/special_issues/ISIS-2015> Selected
Papers from the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015. 

A few days after I have submitted my paper, I was informed “that your
manuscript has been declined for publication in Information”. No further
explanation or editorial comments were provided (Guest Editors of the Issue
were M. Burgin and W. Hofkirchner).

As it follows from your invitation letter, M. Burgin will again be the Chief
Editor for all volumes of the Gothenburg Summit selected papers. 

As you understand, I cannot allow myself to be subjected again to M.
Burgin’s editorial customs. Therefore, I am sorry but I must turn down your
kind proposal.

My publication ambitions are pretty well satisfied with the publication in
the MDPI Proceedings, 2017, Vol. 1, Issue 3, and the attention the two of my
papers have achieved among the readers: Wu Kun’s paper – 148 reads / 56
downloads, Burgin’s paper – 216 reads / 67 downloads. (Not so bad, as you
see).

I appreciate your efforts in Gothenburg Summit organization.

Best regards,

Emanuel.

  

From: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic [mailto:gordana.dodig-crnko...@chalmers.se] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2017 12:17 PM
To: Emanuel Diamant
Cc: markburgin
Subject: INVITATION TO WORLD SCIENTIFIC VOLUME ON THE STUDY OF INFORMATION

 

 

Dear Emanuel,

 

As a result of Gothenburg meeting of the International Society for the study
of information, Mark Burgin and I are preparing two volumes with World
Scientific. 

We would be very happy if  you could contribute to the volume addressing
Philosophy and Methodology of Information.

We would expected a contribution on the topic you presented on the summit.

 

This is the first volume of two, the second one being dedicated to
Theoretical Information Studies.

The books aim to chart the new interconnected territory and thus to set the
foundation for the emerging research field of The study of information,
presenting within the same context contemporary research in theoretical,
philosophical and methodological aspects of information, with the goal of
enabling new insights coming from cross-fertilization among the research
fields. The structure of the books is given in the end of this message.

The schedule for the book project is defined by the following deadlines:

Expression of intention to contribute: November 15, 2017

Paper submission: January 15, 2018

Notification of acceptance/rejection: February 15, 2018

Submission of the final version of the paper: March 1, 2018.

 

In the expression of intention to contribute, please send us your tentative:


1. Title

2. Abstract (200-500 words) and 

3. Length of the proposed paper. 

The typical length of a paper is 15 pages. However, both shorter and longer
papers could be accepted where appropriate.

The final formatting of all papers will be in Word or LaTeX.

As usual, it is responsibility of the author to make certain that the
content of the contribution is significantly new and not submitted for
publication in any other venue - journal, conference, book or other. All
papers will be peer reviewed by at least two independent experts in the
field.

 

If you do not intend to submit a paper, please let us know as soon as
possible.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Gordana and Mark 

Editors

 

The structure of the planned volumes is as follows.

 

Vol 1 Philosophy and Methodology of Information

(G. Dodig-Crnkovic and M. Burgin, edts.)

Part 1. Philosophy of information

Part 2. Methodology of information

Part 3. Philosophy of information studies

Part 4. Methodology of information studies

 

Vol 2 Theoretical Information Studies

(M. Burgin and G. Dodig-Crnkovic, edts.)

Part 1. Foundations of information

Part 2. Information theory

Part 3. Information as a natural phenomenon

Part 4. Cognition and intelligence in natural and artificial systems

Part 5. Social, economic and legal aspects of information

Part 6. Technological aspects of information

 

 

 



__

Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Professor of Computer Science

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Chalmers University of Technology 

School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University

 <http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc> http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc/

General Chair of is4si summit 2017

http://is4si-2017.org <http://is4si-2017.org/>  

 

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Re: [Fis] Principles of Information

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear Michel,

 

Thank you for your comment.

In the draft version of my post, mentioning the last Nobel Prize award I
have followed it by a remark: 

“All FISers pretend to be Einstein; no one bothers himself with a (LIGO)
detector building”.

Then I decided that the phrase is unnecessary harsh and replaced it with the
"citations from Aristotle, Plato, and others…” passage.

 

You are right – the citations could be “a particular type of IF assumption”.
Generally they can, but in this case – they are not!

 

Loet has presented recently a much more elegant expression:

"Nobody of us provide an operative framework and a single (just one!)
empirical testable prevision able to assess "information".

 

Thank you for a concerned reading,

 

Best regards,

Emanuel.

 

---  

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Michel Godron
Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2017 12:07 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Principles of Information

 

The "citations from Aristotle, Plato, Ortega, Leibnitz," are a particular
type of IF " hypothetic assumptions". They cannot be falsifiable as the
hypothesis of gravitional waves, but they may be discussed rationnally as
starting points for principles and definitions of information.   

Cordialement. M. Godron


Le 06/10/2017 à 18:26, Emanuel Diamant a écrit :

Dear FISers,

 

I have heartily welcomed Pedro’s initiative to work out some principles of
information definition quest. But the upsetting discussion unrolled around
the issue pushes me to restrain my support for the Pedro’s proposal.  The
problem (in my understanding) is that FIS discussants are violating the
basic rule of any scientific discourse – the IF/THEN principle. 

We usually start our discourse with a hypothetic assumption (the IF part of
an argument) which is affirmed later by a supporting evidence or by a
prediction that holds under the given assumptions (the THEN part of the
statement). 

The universality of this principle was vividly demonstrated by the recent
Nobel Prize for Physics awarding – 

A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein has predicted the existence of
gravitational waves, but only the construction of the LIGO detector
(implementing the if-then principles) made the observation of gravitational
waves possible. 

Information will become visible and palpable only when an if-then grounded
probe (or an if-then grounded approach) will be devised and put in use.

Until then – long citations from Aristotle, Plato, Ortega, Leibnitz,
alongside with extensive self-citations, will not help us to master the
unavoidable if-then way of thinking.

 

Sincerely yours,

Emanuel. 

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[Fis] Principles of Information

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FISers,

 

I have heartily welcomed Pedro's initiative to work out some principles of
information definition quest. But the upsetting discussion unrolled around
the issue pushes me to restrain my support for the Pedro's proposal.  The
problem (in my understanding) is that FIS discussants are violating the
basic rule of any scientific discourse - the IF/THEN principle. 

We usually start our discourse with a hypothetic assumption (the IF part of
an argument) which is affirmed later by a supporting evidence or by a
prediction that holds under the given assumptions (the THEN part of the
statement). 

The universality of this principle was vividly demonstrated by the recent
Nobel Prize for Physics awarding - 

A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein has predicted the existence of
gravitational waves, but only the construction of the LIGO detector
(implementing the if-then principles) made the observation of gravitational
waves possible. 

Information will become visible and palpable only when an if-then grounded
probe (or an if-then grounded approach) will be devised and put in use.

Until then - long citations from Aristotle, Plato, Ortega, Leibnitz,
alongside with extensive self-citations, will not help us to master the
unavoidable if-then way of thinking.

 

Sincerely yours,

Emanuel. 

 

 

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[Fis] Principles of IS

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear Pedro, Dear FIS Colleagues, 

 

I heartily welcome Pedro's attempt to discipline our discussion on
Principles that underpin our engagement with information studies. After all,
the prime and most important purpose of our discussions is to find out the
right and the all-embracing definition about what is information.

 

In this regard, it seems to me as a principle failure that Pedro's list does
not mention (in its first lines) the duality of the information's nature,
the Physical and Semantic information dichotomy as the core notion of
information. 

 

This duality is not my quirk - Shannon was quite aware about it from the
very beginning. But (as a great man and a great scientist) he restricted
himself only to Physical information studies - "It is important to
emphasize, at the start, that we are not concerned with the meaning or the
truth of messages; semantics lies outside the scope of mathematical
information theory". These days we cannot allow ourselves not to take into
account the information duality.  

 

I know how unfriendly my FIS colleagues are to this standpoint (of mine).
Therefore, I will not bother you with further arguments in its favor -
interested people are invited to see my publications on the Research Gate
page: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel_Diamant/contributions 

 

My best wishes and warmest greetings for the coming frighten days of the
Jewish New Year.

 

Sincerely yours,

Emanuel.

 

 

 

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[Fis] a limited response

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FIS colleagues,

 

As usual, I would like to begin with apologies. I apologize that because of
the gaps in my education I can only partially understand what is being said
in most of your mails. Therefore, I will only partially respond to those
segments of your posts that seem to me to be in the limits of my
understanding. 

 

To Karl Javorszky: 

At March 24, you wrote: "I have given in my work "Natural orders - de
ordinibus naturalibus" (ISBN  9783990571378) the following definition of the
term "information": Information is a description of what is not the case". 

I do not know "what is not the case", but I salute and welcome your
statement that "Information is a description." I am also using (for a quite
a long time now) a similar definition: "Information is a description of
structures observable in a given data set". 

By saying this, I do not pretend to claim for priority or credits - all
credits must be directed to A. Kolmogorov who in his 1965 paper "Three
approaches to the quantitative definition of information" was the first who
has introduced the concept.

As all the other researchers of his time, Kolmogorov has developed his
information quantity measure for a linear one-dimensional communication
message data set. I have expanded and extended Kolmogorov's definition to a
two-dimensional data set. In a two-dimensional data set two types of
structures could be distinguished: primary (basic) data structures and
secondary (meaningful structures of structures) data arrangements. According
to the offered definition the descriptions of the discerned structures
should be called - Physical and Semantic Information. Further details on the
subject could be found in my publications on the Research Gate
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel_Diamant) or on my site
(http://www.vidia-mant.info). 

 

To Sungchul Ji (introduced in Pedro C. Marijuan's post from March 23, 2017):


>From your presentation "Planckian information: a new measure of order" I was
pleased to learn something new about Planckian information - a newborn kind
of information. Although you are not familiar with the notion of information
as a complex two-part entity (Physical and Semantic information
subdivisions), you truthfully posit Planckian information as a physical
information exemplar similar to other representatives of the class such as
Shannon information, Fisher, Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and other. 

In your words: "The Planckian information represents the degree of
organization of physical (or nonphysical) systems.", "Planckian information
is primarily concerned with the amount (and hence the quantitative aspect)
of information.  There are numerous ways that have been suggested in the
literature for quantifying information bedside the well-known Hartley
information, Shannon entropy, algorithmic information, etc. " (That is,
Planckian information is one of them (one of the physical information
manifestations), not a foe, not a competitor, not a foreigner or an
outsider).

 

It has to be mentioned that such an approach is not predominant in FIS
discussions. The mainstream way of thinking looks like this: "complaining
about Shannon entropy as a measure of information is completely justified
because it is steam-engine physics unfortunately still widely used despite
its many flaws and limitations"; and further "Shannon entropy should not
even be mentioned any longer in serious discussions about information"
(http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/2016-June/001039.html). And finally:
"(there is an) urgent need to move away from entropy towards algorithmic
information" (http://sciforum.net/conference/IS4SI-2017/isis-ICPI%202017). 

 

I hope these unfriendly winds will not make an impression on you. I wish you
a speedy and a comfortable accommodation in the FIS community. 

 

Best regards,

Emanuel Diamant.

 

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[Fis] Information as a complex notion

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear Pedro,

Dear FIS colleagues, 

 

Because our current discussion (dubbed "Scientific Communication", announced
by Pedro at Sept. 22, 2016) has deviated from its original purpose and
shifted to our main and most relevant point of interest "What is
information", I dare to remind you about my personal views on the subject:
Information is a complex notion. Like the notion of complex numbers in
mathematics (which are composed of a real and imaginary parts), Information
can be seen as composed of a real and an imaginary part - Physical
information and Semantic Information. Physical information is a
generalization of Shannon, Fisher, Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and as such
informations. Semantic information still does not have its recognized
definition. My attempts to spell out its destiny could be find on my site
http://www.vidia-mant.info or at the Research Gate.

 

Best regards,

Emanuel.

 

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[Fis] you cannot neglect the information duality

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear Hector, 

 

I am very impressed by your letter to Joe Brener. You are absolutely right
when you say that Shannon's information is obsolete and is of limited use.
But you are wrong saying that (it) "should not even be mentioned any longer
in serious discussions about information". As far as I understand the
matters, Shannon's information is a valuable component of the complex notion
of information, which is composed of two subparts - physical and semantic
information. Therefore, Shannon information cannot be dismissed from the
notion of information. Just as other forms of physical information: Fisher
information, Algorithmic information, Kolmogorov complexity, and as such. On
the other hand, semantic information is not a derivative from and not an
extension of physical information.

 

FIS people know nothing about that, (about physical and semantic information
and their coexistence). And they even don't want to know. Therefore, I
discontinue my further comments on this subject (and on your letter). 

 

On the timetable of our current discussion is Marcus Abundis idea about "A
Priori Modeling". And that is what we have to speak about. You can like it
or not, you can accept it or argument against it, but you cannot amend it,
or improve it, or come with your own much better version of it (Loet,
Krassimir, Bob, Stan and others).

 

So, let us comply to the rules.

 

Best regards,

Emanuel.

 

---  

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Hector Zenil
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2016 4:37 PM
To: joe.brenner
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Shannonian Mechanics?

 

I think complaining about Shannon entropy as a measure of information is
completely justified because it is steam-engine physics unfortunately still
widely used despite its many flaws and limitations.

 

But to think that Shannon entropy is at the front-end in the mathematical
discussion of information is a mistake and this, and other groups, have
perpetually been entrapped in a 60s and 70s discussion on a fake ancient
theory of information that not even Shannon himself thought was worth to be
used for anything meaningful in information but for communication measuring
purposes only.

 

Indeed, Shannon entropy is nothing else but a counting function of
states/symbols, at best it is a measure of diversity, a bound on information
transfer. The technical and philosophical discussion here and everywhere
else should be (and has been among those at the scientific front) focused on
what has been done in the last 50 years to leave Shannon entropy behind, but
nobody here (and almost nowhere else) are people discuss about algorithmic
randomness, Levin's universal distribution, measures of sophistication, etc.
but prefer to be in a continuous state of pre 60s Shannon entropy
discussion.

 

Shannon entropy should not even be mentioned any longer in serious
discussions about information, we moved on a long time ago (unfortunately
not even many physicists have done)

 

Trying to be constructive. All best,

 

- Hectorhttp://www.hectorzenil.net/ 

 

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[Fis] _comment to the "A Priori Modeling of Information"

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear FIS all,

Dear Marcus, 

 

The video "A Priori Modeling of Information" looks great, but when I have to
provide an opinion about something brought to my judgment I prefer to read
it rather to listen to its vocalized presentation. Therefore, I asked you to
provide me with a printed version of your proposal. You have kindly
fulfilled my request and therefore I owe you many, many thanks in return.
However, it turns out that all the efforts were in vein - from the printed
texts, I also did not understand nothing. They (the texts) are full with
unknown to me and bizarre notions: "universal meaning", "aesthetic entropy",
"generative informatics", "entropic mimicry", "behavioral entropy" and so
on. From this mass of unknown notions only one was somehow close to my level
of comprehension - the "theory of meaning". Therefore, with your permission,
I will try to comment only on this particular point of your presentation.

 

At least in 3 out of 4 of your documents you mention the Shannon-Weaver
(1949) "theory of meaning" as a basic key component of your attempts to
derive a meaningful informational view. 

A fast glance in the Weaver's part of The Mathematical Theory of
Communication (a composite of two separate papers, one Shannon's and one
Weaver's) reveals the context in which Weaver uses this term:

 

"The concept of information developed in this theory at first seems
disappointing and bizarre-disappointing because it has nothing to do with
meaning and bizarre because it deals not with a single message but rather
with the statistical character of a whole ensemble of messages.

 

I think, however, that these should be only temporary reactions; and that
one should say, at the end, that this analysis has so penetratingly cleared
the air that one is now, perhaps for the first time, ready for a real theory
of meaning.

 

This idea that a communication system ought to try to deal with all possible
messages, and that the intelligent way to try is to base design on the
statistical character of the source, is surely not without significance for
communication in general." (Weaver, 1949, p. 27)

 

This is the one and the only occasion when Weaver uses this term: a real
theory of meaning. He uses it in a hypothetical form - perhaps for the first
time, ready for. Meanwhile, The concept of information developed in this
theory. has nothing to do with meaning. A very important and interesting
point is that Weaver implicitly binds the new theory of meaning with an
attempt to base design on the statistical character of the source.  

 

At the same time (in his part of the same paper), Shannon was much more
determined and strong about the issue: "These semantic aspects of
communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. It is important to
emphasize, at the start, that we are not concerned with the meaning or the
truth of messages; semantics lies outside the scope of mathematical
information theory". Shannon does not use any euphemisms (like theory of
meaning) to explain his intensions, he calls the child by his real name -
semantics! That is the name of his choice! Essentially semantic information
is the name of the issue that is at the heart of all our current
discussions, of your (Marcus) current proposal. 

 

Three years later, in 1952, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel and Rudolf Carnap have
coined the term "Semantic Information" that since then has become the
dominant theme of the ongoing scientific discourse. Again: semantic
information and not the theory of meaning, which you try to revitalize.

 

The reason why the notion of "Semantic Information" has not become a
legitimate part of the information theory is that Bar-Hillel and Carnap have
tried to derive it from the assumptions of the principal Shannon's
information theory. The same as Weaver, when he spoke about his hope of the
theory of meaning future development. The same as you (Marcus), in your
attempt to revive it in your proposal. The same as Terrence Deacon (whom you
quote in support of your claims), in his recent publications: showing how
the concept of entropy can be used to explain the relationship between
information, meaning and work.

 

Shannon in his 1956 paper, "The Bandwagon", has warned against such a misuse
of his information theory: "In short, information theory is currently
partaking of a somewhat heady draught of general popularity. It will be all
too easy for our somewhat artificial prosperity to collapse overnight when
it is realized that the use of a few exciting words like information,
entropy, redundancy, do not solve all our problems". These are Shannon's
words. But who cares? 

 

Pedro does not like when I begin to preach and to teach FIS people that the
Sun is rising on the East.

Okay, I agree, and accept, and obey his constraints. For that reason, I will
shut up with my comments.

[Fis] what is information

[Emanuel Diamant]

assage of heavy freight train. From
the train noise records, would you like to extract the knowledge about the
nature of the train’s payload? Are you serious? That does not work and never
would not (work). 

 

It would be nice if FIS discussions would help the Human Brain Project
participants to overcome their generic cognitive biases. (“Cognitive” as you
remember is an ability to process information).

 

===  

I apologize again for such a long and unbalanced reply.

 

Best regards,

Emanuel.

 

===  

From: howlbl...@aol.com [mailto:howlbl...@aol.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2015 6:40 AM
To: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es; witz...@sbg.at
Cc: r...@howardbloom.net; fis@listas.unizar.es; emanl@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Fis] Information is a linguistic description of structures

 

wonderful description of auxin's many functions, gunther.  

 

may i suggest that auxin--or gaba and glutamate in animals--is like the word
"a" in the english language.  the meaning of "a" depends entirely on
context.  just as Gunther has said in many of his papers.

 

and context changes as developmental stages pass by, just as pedro has
emphasized.

 

a project like ENCODE is ambitious and necessary, but primitive.  it's the
equivalent of breaking down Shakespeare to its component words, then putting
those words in a list. doing that to shakespeare would lose everything for
the sake of gaining almost nothing.

 

this reductionist approach, while of value, is what babara ehrenreich in her
introduction to the upcoming paperback version of my book the god problem:
how a godless cosmos creates, calls "unacknowledged necrophilia."  her
quote:

 

I was educated in this scientific tradition, ending up in cell biology,
which proposed that you cannot understand, say, the flight of a hummingbird
until you have killed the bird, cut its wing muscles into slices a few
microns thick, and subjected them to electron microscopy. Thus a kind of
unacknowledged necrophilia runs through modern laboratory biology: to study
something you first have to kill it. You know you have “understood” it when
you arrive at a theoretical description that contains no hint of agency—just
a series of mechanisms involving organelles, which you have isolated through
high-speed centrifugation, and molecules, identified by a series of
fractionation processes. The hummingbird’s speed and grace is explained by
the density of mitochondria in its wing muscles, leading to an abundant flow
of ATP to the myosin.

to reduce shakespeare to a list of words would be to kill it.  our task is
to understand its life.

 

with warmth and oomph--howard

 

===  

From: Pedro C. Marijuan [mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es](6)
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 2:38 PM
To: Günther Witzany
Cc: Emanuel Diamant; fa...@howardbloom.net; 'fis'
Subject: Re: Information is a linguistic description of structures

 

Dear FISers and all,

I include below another response to Immanuel post (from Guenther). I think
he has penned an excellent response--my only addition is to expostulate a
doubt. Should our analysis of the human (or cellular!) communication with
the environment be related to linguistic practices? In short, my argument is
that biological self-production becomes "la raison d'etre" of communication,
both concerning its evolutionary origins and the continuous opening towards
the environment along the different stages of the individual's life cycle.
It is cogent that the same messenger plays quite different roles in
different specialized cells --we have to disentangle in each case how the
impinging "info" affects the ongoing life cycle (the impact upon the
transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, etc.) There is no shortcut to the
endless work necessary--wet lab & in silico. So I think that Encode and
other big projects are quite useful in the continuous exploration of
biological complexity and provide us valuable conceptual stuff--but looking
for hypothetical big formalisms (I quite agree) is out sight. Molecular
recognition which is the at the  fundamentals of biological organization can
only provide modest guidelines about the main informational architectures of
life... beyond that, there is too much complexity, endless complexity to
contemplate, particularly when we try to study multicellular organization.
Anyhow, this topic of the essential informational openness of the
individual's life cycle appears to me as the Gordian knot to be cut for the
advancement of our field: otherwise we will never connect meaningfully with
the endless info flows that interconnect our societies, generated from the
life cycles of individuals and addressed to the life cycles of other
individuals. Info sources, channels for info flows, and info receptors are
not mere Shannonian overtones, they symbolically refer to the

[Fis] Information is a linguistic description of structures

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FIS colleagues,

 

As a newcomer to FIS, I feel myself very uncomfortable when I have to
interrupt the ongoing discourse with something that looks for me quite
natural but is lacking in our current public dialog. What I have in mind is
that in every discussion or argument exchange, first of all, the grounding
axioms and mutually agreed assumptions should be established and declared as
the basis for further debating and reasoning. Maybe in our case, these
things are implied by default, but I am not a part of the dominant
coalition. For this reason, I would dare to formulate some grounding axioms
that may be useful for those who are not FIS insiders:

 

1. Information is a linguistic description of structures observable in a
given data set

2. Two types of data structures could be distinguished in a data set:
primary and secondary data structures.

3. Primary data structures are data clusters or clumps arranged or occurring
due to the similarity in physical properties of adjacent data elements. For
this reason, the primary data structures could be called physical data
structures.

4. Secondary data structures are specific arrangements of primary data
structures. The grouping of primary data structures into secondary data
structures is a prerogative of an external observer and it is guided by his
subjective reasons, rules and habits. The secondary data structures exist
only in the observer's head, in his mind. Therefore, they could be called
meaningful or semantic data structures. 

5. As it was said earlier, Description of structures observable in a data
set should be called "Information". In this regard, two types of information
must be distinguished - Physical Information and Semantic Information. 

6. Both are language-based descriptions; however, physical information can
be described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is also a
language), while semantic information can be described only by means of
natural human language.

 

This is a concise set of axioms that should preface all our further
discussions. You can accept them. You can discard them and replace them with
better ones. But you can not proceed without basing your discussion on a
suitable and appropriate set of axioms.

 

That is what I have to say at this moment.

My best regards to all of you,

Emanuel.

 

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Re: [Fis] FIS newcomer

[Emanuel Diamant]

 

Dear Jerry, 

 

Thank you for responding to my post.

Thank you very much for an attempt to read and to understand my Vienna
Symposium related publications.

 

I apologize for a delay in my response - I was trying to read and to
understand your papers (Algebraic Biology and 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265238674_Physical_Foundations_of_
Organic_Mathematics_%28Abstract_August_26_2014%29 Physical Foundations of
Organic Mathematics). Unfortunately, I did not understand much of what you
are talking there (about biological computations).

 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265238674_Physical_Foundations_of_
Organic_Mathematics_%28Abstract_August_26_2014%29 Never mind, it is my
fault, not yours. To my shame, I often also do not understand what other
people on the forum are writing too. 

 

As to me, I think (and write) that the era of a computational approach to
science and nature studies is over and we are gradually replacing it with a
cognitive approach. (Computational biology, Computational ecology,
Computational neuroscience, Computational genomics, Computational chemistry,
Computational endocrinology, Computational intelligence, Computational
linguistics and so on are now being replaced with Cognitive biology,
Cognitive ecology, Cognitive neuroscience, Cognitive genomics, Cognitive
endocrinology, Cognitive intelligence, Cognitive linguistics, and even
Cognitive computing).

 

By definition, computational approaches imply intensive data processing,
while Cognitive approaches imply dedicated information processing. What is
the difference? Unfortunately, FIS forum does not dwell on this issue. 

 

I was pleased to hear from Prof. Kun Wu (at his opening lecture in Vienna)
that By means of the reformation, all scientific and philosophical domains
are facing an integrative trend of paradigm reform, which I name as
informationalization of science, (The quotation is from one of his
presentation slides). 

 

As you can see, my assertions are very close to what Prof. Kun Wu claims,
but far from what you (and other mainstream FIS contributors) obey and
adhere to. 

 

I am a newcomer to FIS and I do not intend to preach in the others' temple.
But Prof. Kun Wu is one of the founding fathers of the Philosophy of
Information. Therefore, it would be wise for you to be in an agreement with
his postulates. 

 

Best regards,

Emanuel Diamant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2015 8:42 PM
To: Emanuel Diamant
Subject: Re: [Fis] FIS newcomer

 

Dear Emanuel:

 

Thanks for posting your views on Research Gate.

 

Interesting perspective, but...  the essence of biology / biological
computation are empirical observations that are highly irregular in nature.
One must separate the concepts of structures from functions in the languages
of chemistry and biology.

 

You may wish to look at the concepts of languages from your perspectives.

 

Several of my online available papers will provide more substance for these
comments.

 

Cheers

 

jerry

 

 

On Jun 15, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Emanuel Diamant wrote:





Dear FISlists,

 

I am a newcomer to the FIS discussion table. The debate that is going on in
your list-exchange is very interesting to me, but frankly, for the most of
the time, I only guess about what you are talking - my vocabulary and my
notions of Information are quite different from yours. Nevertheless, I would
like to add my voice to the ongoing discourse - I would like to direct you
to my page on the Research Gate (
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel_Diamant
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel_Diamant) to see my uploads from
the last IS4IS Vienna Conference. Maybe you will find them interesting.

 

Best regards,

Emanuel Diamant.

 

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[Fis] FIS newcomer

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FISlists, 

 

I am a newcomer to the FIS discussion table. The debate that is going on in
your list-exchange is very interesting to me, but frankly, for the most of
the time, I only guess about what you are talking - my vocabulary and my
notions of Information are quite different from yours. Nevertheless, I would
like to add my voice to the ongoing discourse - I would like to direct you
to my page on the Research Gate
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel_Diamant) to see my uploads
from the last IS4IS Vienna Conference. Maybe you will find them interesting.

 

Best regards,

Emanuel Diamant.

 

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