Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-19 Thread Mark Johnson 
Dear Bob (Ulanowicz),

I hope I didn't come across as flippant about the political situation.
The world is obviously in a very frightening and perilous state at the
moment.

Regarding ecology, Shannon and IT, the common denominator is
"counting". This is far from trivial. The disastrous economic policies
which have delivered inequality and austerity... along with Brexit and
Trump... have relied on approaches to measurement and information
which we must now question. In my understanding of your work in
ecology, you count event regularities in the ecosystem.

A change to our understanding of number and counting would change the
way we see the world in a fundamental way (the recent discussion about
Joe Brenner's work on Lupasco is fascinating and it's my Christmas job
to dig into it). There's something important about a logic which
transcends binary distinctions (Spencer Brown and Lou Kauffman,
category theorists, etc all seem to be poking at this).

I remain optimistic. Governor Jerry Brown (Bateson student) gave a
wonderful defiant speech a couple of days ago. "sometimes people need
to have a heart attack to get them to stop smoking. We've just had a
heart attack."

Some fundamental root and branch rethinking is required.

Best wishes,

Mark

On 18 December 2016 at 23:34, Robert E. Ulanowicz  wrote:
>> Thank you Bob!
>>
>> The medium is a very restricted form of communication on the internet, of
>> course...
>>
>> Are our circular deliberations about information victims of the so-called
>> "information technology" which enables them? Is this a variety of
>> Wittgenstein's realisation that the problems of philosophy were problems
>> of language? Perhaps we cannot see the constraints that communications
>> technology itself has on our discourse. How might we try to see them?
>
> Mark, I have long argued against identifying IT with communications
> theory. You're right, doing so does place needless restrictions on the
> discourse. As an ecologist, I use IT to quantify constraint and freedom
> inherent in ecosystem trophic webs, which has nothing to do with
> communication theory. In fact the whole discipline can be treated as
> homologous to probability theory in total abstraction of communications.
>
>> Maybe this goes some way towards accounting for the strange political
>> situation we find ourselves in at the moment!
>
> Almost everyone I know is feeling depressed and dreadful in anticipation
> of what will happen after Jan 20. The feeling is that the Republic is very
> much at risk.
>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Mark
>
> Cheers,
> Bob U.
>



-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonm...@gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-18 Thread Mark Johnson 
Thank you Bob!

The medium is a very restricted form of communication on the internet, of 
course...

Are our circular deliberations about information victims of the so-called 
"information technology" which enables them? Is this a variety of 
Wittgenstein's realisation that the problems of philosophy were problems of 
language? Perhaps we cannot see the constraints that communications technology 
itself has on our discourse. How might we try to see them? 

Maybe this goes some way towards accounting for the strange political situation 
we find ourselves in at the moment!

Best wishes,

Mark

-Original Message-
From: "Bob Logan" 
Sent: ‎18/‎12/‎2016 15:14
To: "Loet Leydesdorff" ; "Robert Ulanowicz" 
; "Alex Hankey" 
Cc: "fis" 
Subject: Re: [Fis] Fwd:  What is life?

Hello Loet, Bob U, Alex et alia - I agree with Bob U when he wrote "The problem 
is that information is not an absolute.”  As I have stated before on this list  
information is relative and depends on the context.


And I agree with Loet when he wrote, "Different systems of reference, of 
course, can attribute different meanings to the same information.”
   In fact McLuhan expressed Loet's thought long ago with the one-liner: "The 
user is the content” Applying this idea to Shannon’s original paper might 
explain why we have so many definitions of information as each reader of his 
original paper has their own interpretation of Shannon because as McLuhan said 
"the user is the content”. 




For this user, Shannon information theory should be called Shannon signal 
theory as Shannon himself said his theory was not concerned with meaning only 
the accuracy of sending a signal from point A to point B. What does information 
without meaning mean anyway? 


I enjoy these conversations about the meaning of information and even wrote a 
book on the subject entitled What Is Information? (Available for free at 
demopublishing.com) but I get the feeling we are like the dog chasing its own 
tail.  I agreed with Bob U’s point that information is not an absolute and then 
I agreed with Loet’s disagreement with Bob U’s point. Talk about a dog chasing 
its tail. 


And if this is not enough consider another McLuhan one-liner: "The medium is 
the message” in which he suggests that there is additional information in the 
medium that carries the signals from point A to point B independent of those 
signals. 


cheers - Bob L





__


Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto 
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications







On Dec 18, 2016, at 2:16 AM, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:


The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when measured 
against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case) will yield 
different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of Thermodynamics. See 
<http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>
 
Dear Bob, 
 
It seems to me that you confuse information with what information means for a 
system of reference. Different systems of reference, of course, can attribute 
different meanings to the same information.
 
@Alex: this confusion is unfortunately pervasive. Unlike Shannon-type 
information, “information” is often defined (following Bateson and McKay) as “a 
difference which makes a difference”, without articulation that the second 
difference presumes the specification of a system of reference. 
 
A series of differences of the first type can be considered as a probability 
distribution that contains uncertainty. “A difference which makes a 
difference”, however, can be considered as “meaningful information”. In my 
opinion, this “meaningful information” should not be equated with information 
because one then uses the same word for two different things and thus generates 
confusion.
 
Best,
Loet
 

[The entire original message is not included.]___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-18 Thread Bob Logan 
Hello Loet, Bob U, Alex et alia - I agree with Bob U when he wrote "The problem 
is that information is not an absolute.”  As I have stated before on this list  
information is relative and depends on the context.

And I agree with Loet when he wrote, "Different systems of reference, of 
course, can attribute different meanings to the same information.”
   In fact McLuhan expressed Loet's thought long ago with the one-liner: "The 
user is the content” Applying this idea to Shannon’s original paper might 
explain why we have so many definitions of information as each reader of his 
original paper has their own interpretation of Shannon because as McLuhan said 
"the user is the content”. 


For this user, Shannon information theory should be called Shannon signal 
theory as Shannon himself said his theory was not concerned with meaning only 
the accuracy of sending a signal from point A to point B. What does information 
without meaning mean anyway? 

I enjoy these conversations about the meaning of information and even wrote a 
book on the subject entitled What Is Information? (Available for free at 
demopublishing.com) but I get the feeling we are like the dog chasing its own 
tail.  I agreed with Bob U’s point that information is not an absolute and then 
I agreed with Loet’s disagreement with Bob U’s point. Talk about a dog chasing 
its tail. 

And if this is not enough consider another McLuhan one-liner: "The medium is 
the message” in which he suggests that there is additional information in the 
medium that carries the signals from point A to point B independent of those 
signals. 

cheers - Bob L



__

Robert K. Logan
Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto 
Fellow University of St. Michael's College
Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD
http://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertKLogan
www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan
www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Logan5/publications



On Dec 18, 2016, at 2:16 AM, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:

The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when measured 
against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case) will yield 
different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of Thermodynamics. See 
>
 
Dear Bob, 
 
It seems to me that you confuse information with what information means for a 
system of reference. Different systems of reference, of course, can attribute 
different meanings to the same information.
 
@Alex: this confusion is unfortunately pervasive. Unlike Shannon-type 
information, “information” is often defined (following Bateson and McKay) as “a 
difference which makes a difference”, without articulation that the second 
difference presumes the specification of a system of reference. 
 
A series of differences of the first type can be considered as a probability 
distribution that contains uncertainty. “A difference which makes a 
difference”, however, can be considered as “meaningful information”. In my 
opinion, this “meaningful information” should not be equated with information 
because one then uses the same word for two different things and thus generates 
confusion.
 
Best,
Loet
 
Loet Leydesdorff 
Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
l...@leydesdorff.net  ; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/  
Associate Faculty, SPRU,  University of Sussex; 
Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. , Hangzhou; 
Visiting Professor, ISTIC,  Beijing;
Visiting Professor,  <>Birkbeck , University of London; 
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ&hl=en 

 
 
___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es 
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis 

___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-17 Thread Loet Leydesdorff 
The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when
measured against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case)
will yield different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of
Thermodynamics. See < 
http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>

 

Dear Bob, 

 

It seems to me that you confuse information with what information means for
a system of reference. Different systems of reference, of course, can
attribute different meanings to the same information.

 

@Alex: this confusion is unfortunately pervasive. Unlike Shannon-type
information, "information" is often defined (following Bateson and McKay) as
"a difference which makes a difference", without articulation that the
second difference presumes the specification of a system of reference. 

 

A series of differences of the first type can be considered as a probability
distribution that contains uncertainty. "A difference which makes a
difference", however, can be considered as "meaningful information". In my
opinion, this "meaningful information" should not be equated with
information because one then uses the same word for two different things and
thus generates confusion.

 

Best,

Loet

 

  _  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

  l...@leydesdorff.net ;
 http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty,   SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor   Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,   ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,   Birkbeck, University of London;


 
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ&hl=en

 

 

___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-17 Thread Francesco Rizzo 
Cari Tutti,
In-form-azione significa formalmente, letteralmente e sostanzialmente un
processo-attività (AZIONE) mediante il quale si da FORMA o si fa prendere
FORMA:
- alle persone, agli animale, alle piante, cioè agli esseri viventi;
- all'Universo intero;
- alle cose;
- alle idee;
IN, nello spazio-tempo.
Quindi tutto è frutto di IN-FORM-AZIONE (neg-entropia) e a sua volta
IN-FORMA: ad esempio. una poesia, un quadro, un libro, uno spartito
musicale, un buco nero, una cellula, uno stato, una stella, un pianeta, un
fiore, un amore.
Il con-testo e la modalità con cui questo avviene danno luogo a quello che
io chiamo processo di TRAS-IN-FORM-AZIONE del quale ci siamo occupati più
volte.
Il contrario dell'INFORMAZIONE è DIS-INFORMAZIONE o DE-FORMAZIONE o
DE-GRADAZIONE(entropia).
Questo è l'ESSENZA o il CUORE della NUOVA ECONOMIA che ho elaborato in
mezzo secolo di ricerca.
L'economia è una scienza mediatrice ecco perchè adotta o usa una
ONTO-LOGICA IN (nella) REALTA' (O.L.I.R.) di ogni scienza o di ogni scienza
della REALTA'.
Rinnovo gli auguri a Tutti.
Francesco

2016-12-18 5:23 GMT+01:00 Robert E. Ulanowicz :

> Alex,
>
> The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when
> measured against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case)
> will yield different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of
> Thermodynamics. See 
>
> Bob
>
> > The problem below is with the definition of the word, 'information'.
> > On an abstract level, a measurable quantity of what Shannon
> > called digital information has been transmitted.
> > Whether the receiver is then 'informed' by it is a question of
> > his ability to interpret it, which depends on semantics.
> > (I can understand the English emails far easier than the
> > occasional Spanish ones - the Shannon information will be
> > the same in both, but not what I get out of it.
> > I thought this distinction between these had long ago
> > been agreed upon in Fis discussions.
> > Where do you stand on it Krassimir?
> > Best wishes,
> > Alex Hankey
>
>
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

Re: [Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-17 Thread Robert E. Ulanowicz 
Alex,

The problem is that information is not an absolute. The same code when
measured against different references (English vs. Spanish in this case)
will yield different measures. It's the obverse of the Third Law of
Thermodynamics. See 

Bob

> The problem below is with the definition of the word, 'information'.
> On an abstract level, a measurable quantity of what Shannon
> called digital information has been transmitted.
> Whether the receiver is then 'informed' by it is a question of
> his ability to interpret it, which depends on semantics.
> (I can understand the English emails far easier than the
> occasional Spanish ones - the Shannon information will be
> the same in both, but not what I get out of it.
> I thought this distinction between these had long ago
> been agreed upon in Fis discussions.
> Where do you stand on it Krassimir?
> Best wishes,
> Alex Hankey


___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis

[Fis] Fwd: What is life?

2016-12-17 Thread Alex Hankey 
The problem below is with the definition of the word, 'information'.
On an abstract level, a measurable quantity of what Shannon
called digital information has been transmitted.
Whether the receiver is then 'informed' by it is a question of
his ability to interpret it, which depends on semantics.
(I can understand the English emails far easier than the
occasional Spanish ones - the Shannon information will be
the same in both, but not what I get out of it.
I thought this distinction between these had long ago
been agreed upon in Fis discussions.
Where do you stand on it Krassimir?
Best wishes,
Alex Hankey


On 18 December 2016 at 02:53, Krassimir Markov  wrote:

> Dear Arturo,
> Your mobile is NOT able to transmit and utilize INFORMATION but some
> signals!!!
> As well as the artificial limb walk with its owner but it is not a living
> mater.
> Firstly, we have to understand what is information!
> After that ...
> Friendly regards
> Krassimir
>
>
>
>
> From: tozziart...@libero.it
> Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2016 8:11 PM
> To: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Subject: [Fis] What is life?
>
>
> Dear
>
>
> You write: "For living beings, we know that "Life is a tramission and
> utilistion of information (not only by ADN, but by all the information
> which is used by them, at all scales for survival)".
> However, to make an example, also my mobile is able to transmit and
> utilize information.
>
> I found (and I did not look very well, to be honest) at least EIGHT
> different definitions of life in literature.
>
> Therefore, if I ask: "What is life?" I have, apart from yours, other SEVEN
> different definitions of life.
>
> What does it mean? This means that we have no idea at all about what is
> life.
>
> It is the same as if I asked: "What is love?": who knows?
>
>
>
> Arturo Tozzi
>
> AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
>
> Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
>
> Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
>
> http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> 
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>



-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789


2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics
and Phenomenological Philosophy




-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789


2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics
and Phenomenological Philosophy

___
Fis mailing list
Fis@listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis