Dear Jerry,
Thank you as usual for your thought-provoking note, which nevertheless requires
the following clarification of your position. You ask, because I assume that
your answers to your four questions is "no", that there is no tension in the
group between the empirical and abstract, given the success of Shannon, etc.
Do you not believe in the validity of Boolean algebra?
JEB: I do not, for complex informational and other non-Markovian processes.
Do you not believe in the validity of encoding processes?
JEB: Only in a very limited computational domain.
Do you not believe in the validity of transmission processes/error correction
codes?
JEB: Same as above. This picture excludes most of what is important in
information transmission in interpersonal interactions.
Do you believe that the genesis of mind is Turing computable?
JEB: I do not
This is, for me at least, a solid basis for 'tension'.
If all this is what the 'overwhelming majority' of people in this group
believe, then I accept my minority status. But then, I also find your more
general position that
The current foundation of information sciences does not meet the needs of
chemistry, biology or medicine. A second foundation must be built to express
the role of information in communications within living systems.
as an overly pessimistic statement of the situation. The FoundationS (plural)
of Information Science are developing due to the work of Pedro in
Bioinformatics and Bob L. and Bob U. in related areas; Gordana in natural
computational aspects of information; Loet and Deacon (by proxy) in dynamics;
myself in the logical grounding and patterns of evolution of all this in
physics; John Collier, José Maria, Sören in cybersemiotics, Krassimir and
others, all hopefully with the major foundational document of Mark Burgin in
mind.
My vision is that what is really needed is a new relational synthesis of this
foundational work that takes into account the most relevant aspects of all of
it. I look forward to seeing new contributions along these lines, emerging,
exactly from the tension between the abstract and non-abstract characteristics
of information.
Best wishes,
Joseph
- Original Message -
From: Jerry LR Chandler
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] fis Digest, Vol 577, Issue 10
Pedro, List:
You write:
...a reference to the tension between the empirical and the abstract in
FIS. I quite agree, it is one of the essential tensions in any healthy
scientific development (whenever it is possible to maintain it).
Tensions?
Tensions between the empirical and the abstract?
From my reading of the posts of various contributors over the past 3-5 years,
I heartily disagree with this view of the current situation on this FIS list
serve.
Shannon's information theory was published about 65 years ago.
It has become the logical foundation of a huge industry employing millions of
workers, globally.
The principle abstraction of information theory can be roughly stated. If
one encoded information (numbers, letters, images, mathematics, physics,
chemistry, biology, medicine, art, music, literature, feeling, emotions, etc.)
into a binary code, then the encoded information can be electronically encoded
and transmitted (transferred) to other electronic devices and decoded by other
machines or individuals. This dependency, in turn, relies upon Boolean Algebra
and associated mathematics. It now appears that the overwhelming majority of
contributors to list serve find this externalist's view of information to be in
complete harmony with the empirical and the abstract.
Where is the tension?
Do you not believe in the validity of Boolean algebra?
Do you not believe in the validity of encoding processes?
Do you not believe in the validity of transmission processes/error correction
codes?
The overwhelming majority of contributors find this externalist's view of
information to be acceptable, and seek to make it more acceptable by tweaking
the "word-smithing" a bit in order to become congruent with their personal
philosophy. At least that is my view of the current status.
Why do I write this message, perhaps a bit on the side of harshness?
Quite simple.
The current foundation of information sciences does not meet the needs of
chemistry, biology or medicine. A second foundation must be built to express
the role of information in communications within living systems. For example,
central to the tree of life are the informative feed-forwards processes that
transmit genetic information into individual anatomies and logical processes,
life itself. Of particular theoretical interest, from the perspective of FIS,
are the feed-forward processes that start with the messages encoded in a
fertilized egg and generate, through a sequence of biochemical process, the
mind.
Perhaps one or more of the