[Fis] [FIS] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[Karl Javorszky]

Gestalt



Alex asks to contribute to his writing on Gestalt, based on Vedic teachings
relating to how we memorise texts. Not knowing anything about the Vedic
part of it, let me summarise what used to be accepted wisdom on Gestalt in
psychology: this without any claim to completeness or correctness or other
virtues.



Gestalt is “what makes a whole /to be worth, to have a value/ more than the
sum of its parts” (Ehrenfels), we have been taught, and to my knowledge
there is no better approach accepted yet. In this respect, Gestalt
resembles life, because there is a difference between a dead body and that
same organism as a living one, and between a random pattern of pixels black
on a screen and the picture of a face, made up by the same number of pixels
black. We had learnt that only a living organism can perceive a Gestalt,
because it is the active collaboration of constituents that join them
together into something recognisable, and this activity comes not from the
objects on the scene but is performed by the spectator. So much the
teachings of old times. Now with all kinds of recognising software, this
approach no more stands. Artificial intelligence machines project, match
and detect patterns among pixels or other data points, be they
fingerprints, voice recordings or contact habits. They perform the
pattern-detection part of peripheral ganglia, including the recognition of
Gestalts. Ehrenfels has introduced a logic with some disregard to accepted
rules of additivity, causing a deep alienation between psychology and
mathematics, the consequences of which we may hopefully help to clean up
here in this FIS.



The ability to look a Gestalt into objects has transformed into the ability
of inanimate objects to constitute a Gestalt, which we can or cannot
perceive. Are these animistic concepts of the world, where the objects have
properties, not we look their properties into them? If the objects, e.g.
pixels on a screen, are a Gestalt, constitute momentarily a constellation
among them into that what is a Gestalt, then the objects have an immanent
property of relations among each other, which is transportable across
individuals and species. (The definition of objectivity is that the
stimulus causes comparable reactions across individuals and across
cultures.) Children and animals react differently to pictures of a circle
and of two dots, if these represent the archetype of a face. There appears
to exist an immanent property of pixels that the nervous system utilises.
In other words: it is a property of a set that it is ordered. There exists
the logical category of possible orders, among which some can be realised
concurrently. Some of the combinations of the possible orders will be so
much more probable than others that they will create a density in a
probability space. Coordinates for pixels in forms that resemble a Gestalt
of a face with two eyes will exist as a delineated class of possible
realisations. The coordinates are the result of superior probabilities of
combinations of orders to appear, relative to the other orders that also
produce coordinates for pixels, but not so frequently, consistently and
reliably.



Not only must the nervous system be prepared to recognise a state of the
world (something is looking at me) in the circle with two dots in it, but
the biological reality must also produce this pattern in abundance. The
recognition of the smiley is done by the central nervous system, which
operates by means of impulses of -70 mV; these are uniform but place-bound
and sequenced in time. As such they resemble N. The production of the head
and the eyes is done while the butterfly is still fluid, so the same
principle is present also in the humeral fluids of the body. The same
Gestalt is produced in two different environments. Producing a smiley in a
biochemical factory and perceiving it as an electric pattern means that the
idea of a smiley exists, irrespective of how we express it in terms of
relations of symbols among each other. We can express the idea of a smiley
by means of elements that can be of many kinds and be anywhere; and we can
express the same idea also by means of uniform units that have fixed
topological positions by being sequenced among each other. The idea of this
Gestalt transcends the languages in which it can be said. In linguistic
parlance, the idea is a deep structure which exists in differing cultures,
each of which give it a differing superficial structure, like the French
say chaise to chair. We are again with the classical problem of having an n
of N that is to be identified consistently across describing languages,
here seen as enumerating systems.



The archetype apparently indeed does exist, and it must be of a simple,
every-day, almost axiomatic truth. The algorithms that produce the
coordinates of a Gestalt are of course some specific of the tautologies
that make up the naming system. The necessary tautology can be of no other
form but the result of very simple, 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[steven bindeman]

I meant to send this not only to Karl (which I did)  but to Alex and to the 
rest of the group as well.

> What  a fascinating analysis into the many aspects of gestalt, Karl!
> 
>  I would like to comment on your statement  that “the idea of gestalt 
> transcends the language in which it can be said. In linguistic parlance, the 
> idea is a deep structure which exists in different cultures, each of which 
> give it a differing superficial structure, like the French say chaise for 
> chair.”
> I  was doing some aimless internet drifting when I came across the following 
> remarks by Perry Link on the problem of translation from Chinese to English 
> (from a review he wrote for the NY Review of Books on the most recent and 
> best translation of the Chinese classic novel Chin Ping Mei):
> 
>  In teaching Chinese-language courses to American students, which I have done 
> about thirty times, perhaps the most anguishing question I get is “Professor 
> Link, what is the Chinese word for __?” I am always tempted to say the 
> question makes no sense. Anyone who knows two languages moderately well knows 
> that it is rare for words to match up perfectly, and for languages as far 
> apart as Chinese and English, in which even grammatical categories are 
> conceived differently, strict equivalence is not possible. Book is not shu, 
> because shu, like all Chinese nouns, is conceived as an abstraction, more 
> like “bookness,” and to say “a book” you have to say, “one volume of 
> bookness.” Moreover shu, but not book, can mean “writing,” “letter,” or 
> “calligraphy.” On the other hand you can “book a room” in English; you can’t 
> shu one in Chinese. I tell my students that there are only two kinds of words 
> they can safely regard as equivalents: words for numbers (excepting integers 
> under five, the words for which have too many other uses) and words that are 
> invented expressly for the purpose of serving as equivalents, like xindiantu 
> (heart-electric-chart) for “electrocardiogram.” I tell them their goal in 
> Chinese class should be to set aside English and get started with thinking in 
> Chinese.
> 
> With reference to Wittgenstein, perhaps the dilemma facing the translator 
> from Chinese to English is that the linguistic gap is not between differing 
> naming systems but between different language games — in other words the 
> players can’t agree on the rules of the game they are playing! Although 
> Wittgenstein exhorts us to describe and not explain if we insist on doing 
> proper philosophy, I would suggest that even basic descriptions cannot be 
> completely equivalent across linguistic barriers because of the differing 
> cultural backgrounds that underlie most actual language use. Thus the Chinese 
> person and the English person may both recognize the smiley face as human, 
> but how they view the place of the human within the larger community of 
> humans will no  doubt be very different.
> 
> Then I came across the following passages concerning the nature of  the self  
> from (of all things) a Vedadatabase:  
>> tvam ādyaḥ puruṣaḥ sākṣād
>>  īśvaraḥ prakṛteḥ paraḥ
>> māyāṁ vyudasya cic-chaktyā
>>  kaivalye sthita ātmani
>> Synonyms: 
>> tvam  ādyaḥ 
>>  — You are the 
>> original; puruṣaḥ  — 
>> the enjoying personality; sākṣāt 
>>  — directly; īśvaraḥ 
>>  — the controller; 
>> prakṛteḥ  — of 
>> material nature; paraḥ 
>>  — transcendental; 
>> māyām  — the material 
>> energy; vyudasya  — 
>> one who has thrown aside; cit 
>> -śaktyā 
>>  — by dint of 
>> internal potency; kaivalye 
>>  — in pure eternal 
>> knowledge and bliss; sthitaḥ 
>>  — placed; ātmani 
>>  — own self.
>> Translation: 
>> You are the original Personality of Godhead who expands Himself all over the 
>> creations and is transcendental to material energy. You have cast away the 
>> effects of the material energy by dint of Your spiritual potency. You are 
>> always situated in eternal bliss and transcendental knowledge.
> 
> I discovered this site from my memory of the Sanskrit word TVAM, which I 
> recalled from my teaching of comparative religions years ago, with reference 
> to a passage where the teacher tells the student to imagine something 
> 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[Alex Hankey]

On 24/12/2016, Karl Javorszky  wrote:
> Information and Wittgenstein
>
>
>
> We should keep the self-evident in focus and refrain from descending into a
> philosophical nihilism. We are, after all, reasonable people, who are able
> to use our intelligence while communicating, and usually we understand each
> other quite well. The idea, that information is just a mental creation,
> evades the point: conceding that information is only a mental image, then
> what is that which determines, which amino acid comes to which place and is
> apparently contained in the sequence of the DNA triplets? If information is
> just an erroneous concept, then what is that what we receive as we ask at
> the airport, which gate to go for boarding?
>
> No, information does exist and we do use it day by day. Shannon has
> developed a method of repeatedly bifurcating a portion of N until finding
> that n of N that corresponds to the same n of which the sender encoded the
> search pattern for the receiver. The task lies not in negating the
> existence of the phaenomenon, but in proposing a more elegant and for
> biology useful explanation of the phaenomenon. The object of the game is
> still the same: identifying an n of N.
>
> The same situation is here with gravitation. We have a name for it, can
> measure it and integrate the concept - more or less seamlessly – into a
> general explanation. We just do not know, in an epistemological sense, what
> gravitation is. We have to take the normative power of the factual
> seriously and admit that we may have problems in the naming of an observed
> fact. This does not absolve us from the task of philosophers, that is, to
> try to understand and find good explanations for the facts that we perceive
> and to our thoughts about the perceptions and the facts.
>
> Adorno summarised the critique on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, by saying, that
> W. apparently had not read the job description of a philosopher carefully
> enough: the task is not to investigate that what can be said exactly about
> a subject that is well known to all, but the task is to chisel away the
> border separating that what can be only felt and that what can be expressed
> understandably. This is the envy speaking of someone who suffered an
> Oedipus tragedy. Socrates said that the perpetrator of a crime suffers more
> than the victim, and post-war German philosophy understandably had no time
> to be interested in rules of exact speech. The grammar of the logical
> language, as a subject for serious study, was swept aside by historical
> cataclysms, although Wittgenstein begot Frege and Carnap who begot von
> Neumann and Boole who begot Shannon and Chomsky. That he in his later life
> put aside his epoch-generating work is completely in the consequence of
> what he had said. It is not disowning the ladder one has built to climb up
> a level of abstraction while doing a cartography of what exact talking
> really means, but a wise and truthful modesty of an artist who had
> fabricated a tool for a specific project. No self-respecting artist would
> want to be remembered for a practical tool he had assembled for a specific
> task. Roughly citing, he says so much: those who have understood what is
> written here, may throw [this book] away, like one has no need for a ladder
> after one has climbed a level. Having found out how the technical people
> speak (or should speak), he withdraws from that field, having clarified the
> rules of exact thinking, closing the subject in a conclusive fashion for
> about 4 generations, and acts in later life as if precognisant of Adorno’s
> words.
>
> Information is a connection of a symbol with a different symbol, if this
> state of the world can have a background and alternatives. If something can
> be otherwise, then the information is contained in the enumeration of the
> cases of being otherwise.
>
> By the use of computers, we can now create a whole topography and
> dramaturgy of exact speech. Had we the creativity of the Greeks, we would
> write a comedy, performed in public, by actors and narrators. The title
> could be: “All acting dutifully, striving their right place, catharsia are
> inevitable”. The best youth of Sparta, Athens etc. would compete for
> prominent places in diverse disciplines, but the results are not
> satisfactory, as the debate emerges, which of the disciplines are above the
> others. The wise people of Attica have come up with a perpetual compromise,
> its main points repeatedly summarised by the chorus, ruling that being
> constantly underway between both correct positions: p1 in discipline d1 and
> position p2 in discipline d2, is the divine sign of a noble character. If
> every athlete follows the same rule, imagine the traffic jams on the stage
> of the amphitheatre! The Greeks would have built an elaborate system of
> philosophy about the predictable collisions among actors representing
> athletes who have attended many of the 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[Alex Hankey]

RE: "The same situation is here with gravitation. We have a name for
it, can measure it and integrate the concept - more or less seamlessly
– into a general explanation. We just do not know, in an
epistemological sense, what gravitation is. We have to take the
normative power of the factual seriously and admit that we may have
problems in the naming of an observed fact. This does not absolve us
from the task of philosophers, that is, to try to understand and find
good explanations for the facts that we perceive and to our thoughts
about the perceptions and the facts.

Dear Karl,

I do not quite see how the point you are making here differs from the
very simple statement that 'we do not know what anything in the
physical world is' (where the word 'is' is being used in some loosely
defined Absolute sense). We only know how it interacts and how it
behaves in given experimental / experiential situations.

Of course in the case of sugar (sucrose, for example) we know what it
is as crystals we see, as something we taste, use to sweeten our
desserts, and our tea / coffee etc., and its chemical structure. I am
then comfortable with the feeling that I 'know what sugar is'. The
same applies to a superconductor or a Josephson junction between two
superconductors.

In the case of elementary particles, we say that 'a free electron is a
spin 1/2 representation of the Poincare Group', and this gives it a
meaning of a slightly more precise kind than sugar. It becomes a
precisely stated element of mathematics, that I personally equate with
a kind of 'Platonic Form'.

Equally in my heart, I feel that I have quite a good idea of what
'goodness' is, and I am equally clear that the IS - Daesh members who
murder innocent victims in Iraq / Syria etc. do not.

We communicate on a day to day basis taking these things for granted.
Am I missing something?

I would sincerely like to know if I am, because I am about to write up
an account of cognition of gestalts from the perspective of the
ancient Vedic science of Shiksha concerning the memorization and
understanding of texts, and I would like to get it as water-tight as
possible.

PLEASE comment!!

Best wishes for Christmas, New Year and the Holiday season,

Alex

P.S. You say that 'Wittgenstein begot Frege', but surely Frege was
completing his work just when Russell discovered his paradox at the
end of writing the Principia with Whitehead, which Wiki say was
published, 1910, 1912 and 1913, whereas Wittgenstein wrote his
Tractatus while a prisoner of war in Italy in 1917-18.

On 24/12/2016, Karl Javorszky  wrote:
> Information and Wittgenstein
>
>
>
> We should keep the self-evident in focus and refrain from descending into a
> philosophical nihilism. We are, after all, reasonable people, who are able
> to use our intelligence while communicating, and usually we understand each
> other quite well. The idea, that information is just a mental creation,
> evades the point: conceding that information is only a mental image, then
> what is that which determines, which amino acid comes to which place and is
> apparently contained in the sequence of the DNA triplets? If information is
> just an erroneous concept, then what is that what we receive as we ask at
> the airport, which gate to go for boarding?
>
> No, information does exist and we do use it day by day. Shannon has
> developed a method of repeatedly bifurcating a portion of N until finding
> that n of N that corresponds to the same n of which the sender encoded the
> search pattern for the receiver. The task lies not in negating the
> existence of the phaenomenon, but in proposing a more elegant and for
> biology useful explanation of the phaenomenon. The object of the game is
> still the same: identifying an n of N.
>
> The same situation is here with gravitation. We have a name for it, can
> measure it and integrate the concept - more or less seamlessly – into a
> general explanation. We just do not know, in an epistemological sense, what
> gravitation is. We have to take the normative power of the factual
> seriously and admit that we may have problems in the naming of an observed
> fact. This does not absolve us from the task of philosophers, that is, to
> try to understand and find good explanations for the facts that we perceive
> and to our thoughts about the perceptions and the facts.
>
> Adorno summarised the critique on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, by saying, that
> W. apparently had not read the job description of a philosopher carefully
> enough: the task is not to investigate that what can be said exactly about
> a subject that is well known to all, but the task is to chisel away the
> border separating that what can be only felt and that what can be expressed
> understandably. This is the envy speaking of someone who suffered an
> Oedipus tragedy. Socrates said that the perpetrator of a crime suffers more
> than the victim, and post-war German philosophy understandably had no time
> to be 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[Karl Javorszky]

Information and Wittgenstein



We should keep the self-evident in focus and refrain from descending into a
philosophical nihilism. We are, after all, reasonable people, who are able
to use our intelligence while communicating, and usually we understand each
other quite well. The idea, that information is just a mental creation,
evades the point: conceding that information is only a mental image, then
what is that which determines, which amino acid comes to which place and is
apparently contained in the sequence of the DNA triplets? If information is
just an erroneous concept, then what is that what we receive as we ask at
the airport, which gate to go for boarding?

No, information does exist and we do use it day by day. Shannon has
developed a method of repeatedly bifurcating a portion of N until finding
that n of N that corresponds to the same n of which the sender encoded the
search pattern for the receiver. The task lies not in negating the
existence of the phaenomenon, but in proposing a more elegant and for
biology useful explanation of the phaenomenon. The object of the game is
still the same: identifying an n of N.

The same situation is here with gravitation. We have a name for it, can
measure it and integrate the concept - more or less seamlessly – into a
general explanation. We just do not know, in an epistemological sense, what
gravitation is. We have to take the normative power of the factual
seriously and admit that we may have problems in the naming of an observed
fact. This does not absolve us from the task of philosophers, that is, to
try to understand and find good explanations for the facts that we perceive
and to our thoughts about the perceptions and the facts.

Adorno summarised the critique on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, by saying, that
W. apparently had not read the job description of a philosopher carefully
enough: the task is not to investigate that what can be said exactly about
a subject that is well known to all, but the task is to chisel away the
border separating that what can be only felt and that what can be expressed
understandably. This is the envy speaking of someone who suffered an
Oedipus tragedy. Socrates said that the perpetrator of a crime suffers more
than the victim, and post-war German philosophy understandably had no time
to be interested in rules of exact speech. The grammar of the logical
language, as a subject for serious study, was swept aside by historical
cataclysms, although Wittgenstein begot Frege and Carnap who begot von
Neumann and Boole who begot Shannon and Chomsky. That he in his later life
put aside his epoch-generating work is completely in the consequence of
what he had said. It is not disowning the ladder one has built to climb up
a level of abstraction while doing a cartography of what exact talking
really means, but a wise and truthful modesty of an artist who had
fabricated a tool for a specific project. No self-respecting artist would
want to be remembered for a practical tool he had assembled for a specific
task. Roughly citing, he says so much: those who have understood what is
written here, may throw [this book] away, like one has no need for a ladder
after one has climbed a level. Having found out how the technical people
speak (or should speak), he withdraws from that field, having clarified the
rules of exact thinking, closing the subject in a conclusive fashion for
about 4 generations, and acts in later life as if precognisant of Adorno’s
words.

Information is a connection of a symbol with a different symbol, if this
state of the world can have a background and alternatives. If something can
be otherwise, then the information is contained in the enumeration of the
cases of being otherwise.

By the use of computers, we can now create a whole topography and
dramaturgy of exact speech. Had we the creativity of the Greeks, we would
write a comedy, performed in public, by actors and narrators. The title
could be: “All acting dutifully, striving their right place, catharsia are
inevitable”. The best youth of Sparta, Athens etc. would compete for
prominent places in diverse disciplines, but the results are not
satisfactory, as the debate emerges, which of the disciplines are above the
others. The wise people of Attica have come up with a perpetual compromise,
its main points repeatedly summarised by the chorus, ruling that being
constantly underway between both correct positions: p1 in discipline d1 and
position p2 in discipline d2, is the divine sign of a noble character. If
every athlete follows the same rule, imagine the traffic jams on the stage
of the amphitheatre! The Greeks would have built an elaborate system of
philosophy about the predictable collisions among actors representing
athletes who have attended many of the concourses. They could have come up
with specific names for typical results and would have named the
agglomerations “elements” and “isotopes” that differ among each other on
how many of the actors are glued together 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[Louis H Kauffman]

Dear Steve,
You write
"But in later years he eventually recognized that the possibility of relating 
propositions in language to facts concerning the world could not in itself be 
proved. Without proof, the house of cards collapses. Once the validity of using 
language to describe the world ini a rigorous and unambiguous way is 
questioned, not much is left.”

I do not think that the issue of proof was foremost for Wittgenstein. Rather, 
he later understood that a pure mirroring of language and world was untenable 
and worked directly with language and its use to show how complex was the 
actuality. The result is that one can still read the Tractatus meaningfully, 
knowing that it states and discusses an ideal of (formal) language and a view 
of the world so created that is necessarily limited. Indeed the later 
Wittgenstein and the Tractatus come together at the point of the Tractatus 
showing how meagre is that ‘that can be said’ from its mirrored and logical 
point of view.
The Tractatus indicates its own incompleteness, and in do doing invalidates its 
use by the logical positivists as a model for the performance of science. It 
was in this background that (through Goedel) the Incompleteness Theorem arose 
in the midst of the Vienna Circle. And here we are in a world generated by 
formal computer languages, facing the uncertainties of models that are 
sensitive enough (as in economics and social science) to cross the boundary and 
affect what is to be modeled.
Best,
Lou Kauffman

> On Dec 23, 2016, at 11:27 AM, steven bindeman  wrote:
> 
> I would like to contribute to the current ongoing discussion regarding the 
> relation between information and meaning. I agree with Dai Griffiths and 
> others that the term information is a problematic construction. Since it is 
> often used as an example of fitting the details of a specific worldly 
> situation into a linguistic  form that can be processed by a computer, this 
> fact in itself introduces various distortions from the reality that is being 
> represented.  The degree of distortion might even be an example of the degree 
> of uncertainty.
> 
> I believe that reference to the early work of Wittgenstein might be of use in 
> this context, especially since his work in his Tractatus text on problems 
> related to logical atomism influenced the design of the von Neumann computer, 
> led to the creation of the Vienna Circle group and later inspired the 
> philosophical movement of logical positivism. Alan Turing was also one of his 
> students.
> 
> In this early work Wittgenstein had believed that a formal theory of language 
> could be developed, capable of showing how propositions can succeed in 
> representing real states of affairs and in serving the purposes of real life. 
> He believed that language is like a picture which is laid against reality 
> like a measuring rod and reaches right out to it. But in later years he 
> eventually recognized that the possibility of relating propositions in 
> language to facts concerning the world could not in itself be proved. Without 
> proof, the house of cards collapses. Once the validity of using language to 
> describe the world ini a rigorous and unambiguous way is questioned, not much 
> is left. Although propositions are indeed capable of modeling and describing 
> the world with a rigor not unlike that of mathematical representations of 
> physical phenomena, they cannot themselves describe how they represent this 
> world without becoming self-referential. Propositions are consequently 
> essentially meaningless, since their meaning consists precisely in their 
> ability to connect with the world outside of language. A perfect language 
> mirrors a  perfect world, but  since the latter is nothing more than a 
> chimera so is the former.
> 
> Here are some quotes (taken out of their original contexts) from 
> Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that I believe are relevant to the discussion on 
> information and meaning:
> 
> The facts in logical space are the world. What is the case — a fact— is the 
> existence of states of affairs.  A state of affairs (a state of things) is a 
> combination of objects (things). It is essential to things that they should 
> be possible constituents of states of affairs. If I know an object I also 
> know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs.  Objects contain the 
> possibility of all situations. The configuration of objects produces states 
> of affairs. The totality of existing states of affairs is the world. The 
> existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality. States of 
> affairs are independent of one another.  A picture is a model of reality. A 
> picture is a fact.  Logical pictures can depict the world. A picture depicts 
> reality by representing a possibility of existence and non-existence of 
> states of affairs. Situations can be described but not given names. (Names 
> are like points; propositions like arrows — they 

Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 33, Issue 41: On the relation between information and meaning

[steven bindeman]

I would like to contribute to the current ongoing discussion regarding the 
relation between information and meaning. I agree with Dai Griffiths and others 
that the term information is a problematic construction. Since it is often used 
as an example of fitting the details of a specific worldly situation into a 
linguistic  form that can be processed by a computer, this fact in itself 
introduces various distortions from the reality that is being represented.  The 
degree of distortion might even be an example of the degree of uncertainty.

I believe that reference to the early work of Wittgenstein might be of use in 
this context, especially since his work in his Tractatus text on problems 
related to logical atomism influenced the design of the von Neumann computer, 
led to the creation of the Vienna Circle group and later inspired the 
philosophical movement of logical positivism. Alan Turing was also one of his 
students.

In this early work Wittgenstein had believed that a formal theory of language 
could be developed, capable of showing how propositions can succeed in 
representing real states of affairs and in serving the purposes of real life. 
He believed that language is like a picture which is laid against reality like 
a measuring rod and reaches right out to it. But in later years he eventually 
recognized that the possibility of relating propositions in language to facts 
concerning the world could not in itself be proved. Without proof, the house of 
cards collapses. Once the validity of using language to describe the world ini 
a rigorous and unambiguous way is questioned, not much is left. Although 
propositions are indeed capable of modeling and describing the world with a 
rigor not unlike that of mathematical representations of physical phenomena, 
they cannot themselves describe how they represent this world without becoming 
self-referential. Propositions are consequently essentially meaningless, since 
their meaning consists precisely in their ability to connect with the world 
outside of language. A perfect language mirrors a  perfect world, but  since 
the latter is nothing more than a chimera so is the former.

Here are some quotes (taken out of their original contexts) from Wittgenstein’s 
Tractatus that I believe are relevant to the discussion on information and 
meaning:

The facts in logical space are the world. What is the case — a fact— is the 
existence of states of affairs.  A state of affairs (a state of things) is a 
combination of objects (things). It is essential to things that they should be 
possible constituents of states of affairs. If I know an object I also know all 
its possible occurrences in states of affairs.  Objects contain the possibility 
of all situations. The configuration of objects produces states of affairs. The 
totality of existing states of affairs is the world. The existence and 
non-existence of states of affairs is reality. States of affairs are 
independent of one another.  A picture is a model of reality. A picture is a 
fact.  Logical pictures can depict the world. A picture depicts reality by 
representing a possibility of existence and non-existence of states of affairs. 
Situations can be described but not given names. (Names are like points; 
propositions like arrows — they have sense.)  Only propositions have sense; 
only in the nexus of a proposition does  a name have meaning.

Finally, with regards to the problems about information, I would add that 
Alfred Korzybski (and later Marshall McLuhan) once wrote that “the map is not 
the territory.” The map is merely a picture of something that it represents. 
Increasing the amount of information may reduce the granularity of the picture, 
but it remains a picture. This means that accumulation greater and greater 
amounts of information can never completely replace or represent the infinite 
complexity of any real-lilfe situation — and this is an insight that 
Wittgenstein realized only in his later philosophical work.

Steve Bindeman


> On Dec 22, 2016, at 7:37 AM, fis-requ...@listas.unizar.es wrote:
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>   1. Re: What is information? and What is life? (Dai Griffiths)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 12:44:59 +
> From: Dai Griffiths 
> To: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Subject: Re: [Fis] What is information? and What is life?
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