Re: [Fis] The Travellers
regards Krassimir -Original Message- From: Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 3:45 PM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] The Travellers Dear FIS colleagues, Quite interesting exchanges, really. The discussion reminds me the times when behaviorism and ethology were at odds on how to focus the study of human/animal behavior. (Maybe I already talked about that some months ago.) On the one side, a rigorous theory and a strongly reductionist point of view were advanced --about learning, conditioned unconditioned stimuli, responses, observation standards, laboratory exclusive scenario, etc. On the other side, it was observing behavior in nature, approaching without preconceptions and tentatively characterizing the situations and results; it was the naturalistic strategy, apprehending from nature before forming any theoretical scheme (of course, later on Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Eibestfeldt, etc. were to develop ad hoc theoretical schemes). How can we develop a theory on signals without the previous naturalistic approach to the involved phenomena? Particularly when the panorama has dramatically changed after the information-biomolecular revolution. We have a rich background of cellular signaling systems, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, to explore and cohere. We have important neuroscientific ideas (although not so well developed). We have social physics and social networks approaches to the social dynamics of information. We should travel to all of those camps, not to stay there, but to advance a soft all-encompassing perspective, later on to be confronted with the new ideas from physics too. The intertwining between self-production and communication is a promising general aspect to explore, in my opinion... socially and biologically it makes a lot of sense. Semiotics could be OK for the previous generation--something attuned to our scientific times is needed now. best ---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 X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 ( 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ - ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 Http://web.ncf.ca/collier ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] The Travellers
Dear Pedro, Dear Sören, Please let me call the attention of both of you to Sören's article in Biosemiotics of 24 May 2012 What Does it Take to Produce Interpretation? Informational, Peircean and Code-Semiotic Views on Biosemiotics. Judging from the abstract, this article criticizes at least some points in Peircean pragmaticist semiotic theory based on simulataneous types of evolution. It is this balance - that one cannot accept the precepts of Peircean semiotics automatically as science - that has been missing in the discussion. Thus Stjernfelt's book, /Natural Propositions/ while showing the movement of Peirce's thought toward greater realism, confirms over and over that it is a narrow window of proposition and argument involving a fundamental reliance on propositional truth in reasoning. I for one cannot see that it enables us to attain idealized and general objectives in ... arts, science, politics. technology and other large human endeavors. Stjernfelt sees propositions throughout nature, not only in language, but he then subjects them to the reductionist framework of a Peircean logic still based on a binary, linguistic truth-functionality confirmed by mathematics. I would like to suggest that what Pedro may be calling for is something like an /inverse semiotics/, based on theories of information which reflect the dynamics of existence, in which the primary truth is the truth of reality, and secondarily that of signs which can be captured in propositions. Thanks to all, Joseph - Original Message - From: Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es To: fis@listas.unizar.es Cc: Søren Brier sb@cbs.dk Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2014 2:28 PM Subject: Re: [Fis] The Travellers Dear FIS colleagues, I am responding to a mail from Soeren (below) that, curiously, was retained by the list filter. Sorry, but some parts of his message are written in a rather arrogant tone that does not match the unconditionally polite style of our exchanges. This is a pluralistic list and quite different positions may be defended, always within appropriate scholarly bounds. First, my comment on semiotics was as it was --not with the exaggeration introduced by Soeren. Looking in positive, it is interesting that in the 80's I also started a PhD thesis on the parallel evolution of neuroanatomy and behavior, with a pretty strong ethological content, but stopped it as I could not converge to any relevant outcome. Instead I moved downwards, and started the informational study of the cell and the evolution of biological information processing... Later on the approach pleased Michel Conrad, and the rest is part of fis history. About my physicalist conception of signaling and biological information, I think the two recent papers in BioSystems (On prokaryotic Intelligence... and On eukaryotic Intelligence...) represent an original view that can enrich the current system biology debates on signaling bases of intelligence--or not!, people will tell. To keep the explanation short, the way cellular life has channeled the energy flow (eg, Morowitz, 1968) versus the channeling of the information flow contains lessons for the further deployment of biological and social complexity. In particular, the cellular processual distinction between metabolite and signal looks fascinating, in human terms it is like reading the newspaper vs, eating a sandwich (it can be found in my recent paper of fis-Moscow, journal Information)... Not far from these views, engineer Adrian Bejan (2012) has recently proposed a constructal law based on the circulation needs of the energy flow in nature and society--could we devise a parallel or complementary scheme for the information flow? Actually Bejan's attempt covers it but rather poorly, at least compared with the depth of the energetic part. In part, I am frustrated that we have been living the most momentous changes in the social history of information and at fis have been able to say very little about. Rather than struggling to achieve the true, monolithic, universal theory of information, shouldn't we aspire to frame a convivial multi-disciplinary space where plenty of both APPLIED and theoretical research on informational entities can be developed and cross-fertilize? And this is my Second of the week. Best regards ---Pedro Søren Brier wrote: Dear Pedro This is a wonderful mail revealing all sorts of theoretical views and philosophy of science prejudices. This one takes the price: Semiotics could be OK for the previous generation--something attuned to our scientific times is needed now. The conclusion is that semiotics is not something new and advanced but old-fashioned and outdated !!! The Peircean biosemioticians are fooling themselves ! They are not scientific. This is a crucial discussion that many of us have with Marcello Barbieri on a somewhat different theoretical platform. But he is wonderfully clear
Re: [Fis] The Travellers
Dear FIS colleagues, Quite interesting exchanges, really. The discussion reminds me the times when behaviorism and ethology were at odds on how to focus the study of human/animal behavior. (Maybe I already talked about that some months ago.) On the one side, a rigorous theory and a strongly reductionist point of view were advanced --about learning, conditioned unconditioned stimuli, responses, observation standards, laboratory exclusive scenario, etc. On the other side, it was observing behavior in nature, approaching without preconceptions and tentatively characterizing the situations and results; it was the naturalistic strategy, apprehending from nature before forming any theoretical scheme (of course, later on Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Eibestfeldt, etc. were to develop ad hoc theoretical schemes). How can we develop a theory on signals without the previous naturalistic approach to the involved phenomena? Particularly when the panorama has dramatically changed after the information-biomolecular revolution. We have a rich background of cellular signaling systems, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, to explore and cohere. We have important neuroscientific ideas (although not so well developed). We have social physics and social networks approaches to the social dynamics of information. We should travel to all of those camps, not to stay there, but to advance a soft all-encompassing perspective, later on to be confronted with the new ideas from physics too. The intertwining between self-production and communication is a promising general aspect to explore, in my opinion... socially and biologically it makes a lot of sense. Semiotics could be OK for the previous generation--something attuned to our scientific times is needed now. best ---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 X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 ( 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ - ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] The Travellers
Very sympathetic on the concept of travelers is that the basic model is that of a dynamic system, as opposed to a Newtonian one, wherein everything stays put or keeps on continuing as having been instructed to do. For the bourgeois, the travelers have a connotation of mystery. They follow paths that are not comprehensible to the philistine, find reason and meaning in their activities which are hidden to the well-behaving, and they communicate in ways incomprehensible to the traditionally learned. This is almost a revolution that FIS has arrived at concepts that differ from the classical in the points: 1) Time does not stand still 2) There is an element of incomprehension 3) Not the same rules apply to everyone 4) Groups have their own history 5) The own history makes the actions of the group reasonable for that group 6) Even if other groups find no meaning behind the actions of a different group 7) What is known in one group is not necessarily known in other groups 8) Therefore what is information depends on the history of individual groups As much as I like these (and similar) concepts, and advocate their usage in scientific thinking, they make it obvious that the terms “information” and “meaning” have roots in the learning history of the individual. (For someone, who has grown up speaking Klingonese, some noises have meaning and convey information.) Therefore, these terms are not suited to be used in a rational discourse. The denotation of a rational term cannot be dependent on individual whims or subjective learnings (as Wittgenstein has shown). InshAllah, at the workshop there will be a presentation showing how to allow for systems to learn (thus making unbreakable cryptographies, as for the communication to remain private, the two /or more/ participants need to have had a common language-learning phase together, having been exposed to the same influences and having learnt the same “words” /= symbols for denotations of occurrences/ to “mean” the same). Altogether, the concept of dynamic interactions with histories differing as per individual or group, but not unified overall, comes thankfully towards concepts known from psychology and learning theories. Karl 2014-10-27 10:59 GMT+01:00 Francesco Rizzo 13francesco.ri...@gmail.com: Cari tutti, secondo me, il concetto o significato dell'informazione è l'assunzione o il prendere forma di tutti e di tutto. Vi sono tanti tipi di informazione che usano unità di misure diverse e talvolta contrastanti. Ad es, l'informazione matematica si misura in bit di entropia. Nell'informazione naturale o termodinamica l'entropia coincide con la degradazione energetica o deformazione (dis-informazione). ma non v'è contraddizione:il significato è sempre lo stesso, l'unità di misura è diversa. D'altra parte perché l'informazione matematica acquisti un significato semantico è necessario un s-codice che impoverisce l'informazione matematica e rende possibile un significato semiotico-culturale e storico-sociale.Il valore dei beni (economici) è funzione della loro informazione.La moneta è il segno del valore (Marx). La forma del valore o il valore della forma è fondamentale e fondante. La triade semiotica è costituita da: significazione, informazione e comunicazione di cui si avvalgano l'esistenza e la conoscenza in generale. So di procurarvi qualche fastidio linguistico che potete evitare facendo finta di non avere ricevuto alcun messaggio. Intanto, grazie e un abbraccio per tutti. Francesco Rizzo. 2014-10-27 7:12 GMT+01:00 John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za: Folks, I agree with Pedro that the meaning issue is important. After trying to give a coherent account within established information theory for a number of years (starting with Intrinsic Information in 1990) I came to the conclusion that information theory was not enough, and admitted that at the Biosemiotics Gathering in Tartu about ten years ago. I now believe that semiotics is the way to go to understand meaning, and that information theory alone is inadequate to the task. Of course information theory could be extended, but I think the correct extension is semiotics. As Pedro said, we have not got agreement in many years. I think it is time to give it up and move into semiotics if we want to fully understand information. In direct opposition to Pedro's appeal to the Travellers metaphor, I think that history has shown that semiotics is distinct from information theory, and that information theory should restrict itself to the grounds that it has already accomplished. Oddly, Pedro seems to be saying that information theory includes meaning in exactly the opposite way to the way that gypsies do not historically include Travellers. So I don't get his argument. I believe that without an explicit theory of signs, we cannot hope to get a theory of meaning from the idea of information alone. I would not be upset if I were
Re: [Fis] The Travellers
Folks, I agree with Pedro that the meaning issue is important. After trying to give a coherent account within established information theory for a number of years (starting with Intrinsic Information in 1990) I came to the conclusion that information theory was not enough, and admitted that at the Biosemiotics Gathering in Tartu about ten years ago. I now believe that semiotics is the way to go to understand meaning, and that information theory alone is inadequate to the task. Of course information theory could be extended, but I think the correct extension is semiotics. As Pedro said, we have not got agreement in many years. I think it is time to give it up and move into semiotics if we want to fully understand information. In direct opposition to Pedro's appeal to the Travellers metaphor, I think that history has shown that semiotics is distinct from information theory, and that information theory should restrict itself to the grounds that it has already accomplished. Oddly, Pedro seems to be saying that information theory includes meaning in exactly the opposite way to the way that gypsies do not historically include Travellers. So I don't get his argument. I believe that without an explicit theory of signs, we cannot hope to get a theory of meaning from the idea of information alone. I would not be upset if I were proven wrong. My best, John At 02:35 PM 2014-10-23, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Regarding the theme of physical information raised by Igor and Joseph, the main problematic aspect of information (meaning) is missing there. One can imagine that as two physical systems interact, each one may be metaphorically attributed with meaning respect the changes experimented. But it is an empty attribution that does not bring any further interesting aspect. Conversely we see real elaboration of meaning in the cellular structures of life, particularly in brains, and we see in our societies how scientific, technological, and economic advancements are bringing together more and more flows of information around (social complexity and information completely dovetail, and that's a very important feature). Together with physical information (information theory, logics, symmetry, etc.) each one of those realms has something important to tell us regarding the unifying perspective necessary to make sense of the different approaches to information: we have to carefully listen to all of them. Thus, at the time being, the mission of information science --or FIS at least-- would remind The Travellers, those people in the UK and Ireland, pretendedly gypsies, who live a nomadic life camping from site to site... It may look unfortunate for the disciplinarily specialized parties, but we cannot settle any permanent info camp --seemingly for quite a long time. best --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 X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 ( 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ - ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis -- John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 Http://web.ncf.ca/collier ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] The Travellers
Cari tutti, secondo me, il concetto o significato dell'informazione è l'assunzione o il prendere forma di tutti e di tutto. Vi sono tanti tipi di informazione che usano unità di misure diverse e talvolta contrastanti. Ad es, l'informazione matematica si misura in bit di entropia. Nell'informazione naturale o termodinamica l'entropia coincide con la degradazione energetica o deformazione (dis-informazione). ma non v'è contraddizione:il significato è sempre lo stesso, l'unità di misura è diversa. D'altra parte perché l'informazione matematica acquisti un significato semantico è necessario un s-codice che impoverisce l'informazione matematica e rende possibile un significato semiotico-culturale e storico-sociale.Il valore dei beni (economici) è funzione della loro informazione.La moneta è il segno del valore (Marx). La forma del valore o il valore della forma è fondamentale e fondante. La triade semiotica è costituita da: significazione, informazione e comunicazione di cui si avvalgano l'esistenza e la conoscenza in generale. So di procurarvi qualche fastidio linguistico che potete evitare facendo finta di non avere ricevuto alcun messaggio. Intanto, grazie e un abbraccio per tutti. Francesco Rizzo. 2014-10-27 7:12 GMT+01:00 John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za: Folks, I agree with Pedro that the meaning issue is important. After trying to give a coherent account within established information theory for a number of years (starting with Intrinsic Information in 1990) I came to the conclusion that information theory was not enough, and admitted that at the Biosemiotics Gathering in Tartu about ten years ago. I now believe that semiotics is the way to go to understand meaning, and that information theory alone is inadequate to the task. Of course information theory could be extended, but I think the correct extension is semiotics. As Pedro said, we have not got agreement in many years. I think it is time to give it up and move into semiotics if we want to fully understand information. In direct opposition to Pedro's appeal to the Travellers metaphor, I think that history has shown that semiotics is distinct from information theory, and that information theory should restrict itself to the grounds that it has already accomplished. Oddly, Pedro seems to be saying that information theory includes meaning in exactly the opposite way to the way that gypsies do not historically include Travellers. So I don't get his argument. I believe that without an explicit theory of signs, we cannot hope to get a theory of meaning from the idea of information alone. I would not be upset if I were proven wrong. My best, John At 02:35 PM 2014-10-23, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Regarding the theme of physical information raised by Igor and Joseph, the main problematic aspect of information (meaning) is missing there. One can imagine that as two physical systems interact, each one may be metaphorically attributed with meaning respect the changes experimented. But it is an empty attribution that does not bring any further interesting aspect. Conversely we see real elaboration of meaning in the cellular structures of life, particularly in brains, and we see in our societies how scientific, technological, and economic advancements are bringing together more and more flows of information around (social complexity and information completely dovetail, and that's a very important feature). Together with physical information (information theory, logics, symmetry, etc.) each one of those realms has something important to tell us regarding the unifying perspective necessary to make sense of the different approaches to information: we have to carefully listen to all of them. Thus, at the time being, the mission of information science --or FIS at least-- would remind The Travellers, those people in the UK and Ireland, pretendedly gypsies, who live a nomadic life camping from site to site... It may look unfortunate for the disciplinarily specialized parties, but we cannot settle any permanent info camp --seemingly for quite a long time. best --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 X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 ( 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ - ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis -- John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 Http://web.ncf.ca/collier
