Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-06-05 Thread Bruno Marchal
Hi Joseph,


> On 31 May 2018, at 17:28, Joseph Brenner  wrote:
> 
> Stan,
>  
> Good, but things can also run in the opposite direction. How about variety 
> (plus more energy) generating more variety, more possibilities and allowing 
> new ‘information’ to emerge? Standard logical analysis is inadequate because 
> it cannot handle this picture.


Is not a simple counting algorithm, in base greater than 2, generating all 
information (in Shannon sense)?

0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, etc.

Of course, this does not generate 01, of 001, but they appear as easy 
subsequence like in 101 or 1001. You can also directly generate all finite 
sequences.

Then a universal dovetailer, which is a program generating all programs (in 
some fixed programming language), and execute them on all input do much more, 
as it generates all information, and all ways all machine reacted to such 
information, and, assuming mechanism, that generates (in some sense) also their 
thoughts and experiences in that process (i.e, the information in the cognitive 
first person private sense). This is already less trivial than a counting 
algorithm which can be shown to be NOT Turing universal.

But this will never generate any physical realities. On the contrary, as I 
explain in my papers, the physical will have to be retrieved through a sum on 
all computations (which exists in arithmetic) below my substitution level, 
going through my states, and this can be used to show that physics has to be, 
fundamentally, a statistics, even a quantum-like statistics on all computations.

So, the arithmetical reality contains the seed of your varieties, I think, 
which generates all information(s). Now, to get physics from there, we need to 
structure that information space by using the canonical machine theory of 
self-reference, by Gödel, Löb, Solovay. That would be too long to describe here 
and now, but ask any question, as I do think this is relevant in this list, and 
especially in this thread on the nature of information, and, I add, on the 
nature of matter.

Bruno

PS Please, take your time to answer, as this was my second post of this week. I 
will comment your possible remarks next week.






>  
> Joseph
>  
> From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es 
> <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>] On Behalf Of Stanley N Salthe
> Sent: jeudi, 31 mai 2018 16:21
> To: Burgin, Mark; fis
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
>  
> Mark -- What Shannon referred to as 'entropy' was 'variety'. 'Information' 
> per se was achieved by way of a reduction or winnowing of this variety of 
> possibilities, leaving 'information' to survive. 
>  
> STAN 
>  
> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Burgin, Mark  <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>> wrote:
> Dear Loet,
> Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is Shannon's 
> measure of information, which is called entropy. 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>> Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,
>>  
>> The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and 
>> res extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that 
>> things could have been different is not out there in the world as something 
>> seizable such as piece of wood.
>>  
>> Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but it 
>> can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others). The 
>> grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to operationalize 
>> Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the measurement as information. 
>>  
>> Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a 
>> system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer to 
>> call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is 
>> embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as 
>> Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as physical.
>>  
>> In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical 
>> entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a 
>> distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this distribution 
>> will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the probabilistic 
>> entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 = .49 bits of 
>> information. One thus can prove that this information is not physical.
>>  
>> Best,
>> Loet
>>  
>> Loet Leydesdorff
>> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
>> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>> l..

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-06-05 Thread Bruno Marchal
Dear Arturo,


> On 21 May 2018, at 12:49, tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
> 
> Dear Bruno, 
> You state that:
> "When poll are done at congress in cosmology or quantum computing, about half 
> of the physicists endorse the non collapse theory, as it is covariant, and 
> has no “measurement problem”.
> This means that the main tenet of your account, your "First Principle", is 
> not accepted by HALF of the scholars.
> How can you build your huge building on a so much controversial claim?
> 
> 


That was just a probably useless reply to the remark according to which few 
people endorse the non-collapse theory. In science, there is no poll, no vote, 
no mainstream, nor any similar form of argument per authority.

My claim for the non)collapse theory is that the collapse theory violate the 
Schroedinger equation, or the unitary evolution, and so is mainly a statement 
that quantum mechanics does not apply to … and the rest has never been made 
clear. There are almost as much collapse theory than there are physicists 
rejecting the SWE. Even Bohr, after expelling us that the collapse results from 
the perturbation of the act of measuring, admits to Einstein & AL., in his 
reply to the EPR paper (which shows that if there is a collapse due to 
measurement, it has to be Faster Than Light (FTL), that the collapse is not a 
physical phenomenon. Yet, he will later refuse to talk to Everett, and ciricize 
his idea of abandoning the collapse.

Now, you can say that I am biased, as I predicted the “many-worlds” much before 
I knew about quantum physics, in the form of the many computations which have 
been proved to be executed in virtue of very elementary truth. That has been 
seen by Gödel partially, and made clear by Church, Kleene and the works which 
followed. Today we know that even a simple Diophantine equation does already 
the job, and emulate or simulate exactly all computational processes. 

Unfortunately, when I will study quantum mechanics, I will take, like many, the 
collapse for granted, but I was still sure about the many computations, and I 
was still predicting the digital equivalent of a notion of “many-worlds”. It 
took me to read the EPR paper to begin to change my mind, but it is only after 
the careful study of Everett argument, that I will realise that quantum 
mechanics confirms the “many-worlds”, and thus the simplest and obvious, albeit 
shocking perhaps, consequence of Mechanism in the philosophy of mind (aka 
cognitive science). I predicted also the non-cloning theorem, indeterminacy, 
and non-locality, all as a natural phenomenology “lived” by any introspective 
universal machine.




> Furthermore, your links with Tegmark and Benacerraf confirm my thesis: your 
> account is a philosophical one,
> 
Not at all. I have proven that if Mechanism isn correct, then physics has to be 
retrieved in a very precise way, as a mode of knowledge imposed by 
incompleteness in the machine or number self-reference theory, and I would have 
claim to have refute that form of Mechanism if the facts would have refuted 
this. But the facts confirm this, up to now.

So, Mechanism explains, until now, both consciousness and matter appearances, 
where physicalism and/or materialism failed, up to now, and indeed it would 
require a non-mechanist theory of mind, which usually are nonsense.

It explains consciousness by showing that any universal machine which 
introspect itself, and remains sound in that process, is confronted to 
something 

- True,
- Non doubtable,
- Immediate,
- Non provable,
and 
- Non definable.

Which is a good candidate for consciousness.

The theory also provides a role for consciousness, as it shows that such truth 
can be used by the machine to transform itself into a more speedy machine 
relative to the machine(s) supporting it, or even to simply other machines. The 
machine needs to be very cautious, because if it deduces that this is true, it 
becomes inconsistent and unsound, so the machine needs some act of faith, or to 
remember the question mark when invoking Mechanism. It is a subtle but 
important point.



> based on a logical principle, that, although fashinating and intriguing, is 
> highly controversial. 
> 

Mechanism in cognitive science is an old and venerable theory, appearing in 
Indian and Greek antic text, renewed by Descartes and Diderot (who called it 
“rationalism”). 

Note that mechanism in cognitive science refutes mechanism in physics. This is 
due to the fact that no universal machine can ever know for sure which machine 
she is, nor which computations (in arithmetic) supports us, and that any exact 
observable prediction has to be retrieved from a non computable statistics on 
all computations. But the propositional physical logic has been shown 
decidable, and you can consult my long texts to look at a theorem prover for it 
in LISP.

Is the theory of evolution controversial? It used implicitly mechanism, because 
non-mechanism would require infinite amount 

[Fis] Is information physical?

2018-06-04 Thread 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.

 

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


Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-06-02 Thread Francesco Rizzo
Cari Tutti,

ho affrontato la questione dell’accoppiata energia−informazione altre
volte. Ora aggiungo, altrettanto brevi considerazioni in proposito.
L’energia è un modo di essere dell’informazione e l’informazione è un modo
di essere dell’energia.

In apodittica o estrema sintesi:

* *Informazione naturale o termodinamica*: *I* = −*S* = neg−entropia
(energia libera)  dipendente dalla *forma* o distribuzione/diffusione delle
molecole o particelle: *entropia* (energia degradata) è equilibrio o
diffusione omogenea o indifferenziata delle particelle o molecole, perché
il gradiente termico (separazione delle molecole calde e veloci da un lato
e fredde e lente dall’altro) salta: *neg**−**entropia* è dis−equilibrio o
disposizione eterogenea o  differenziata delle particelle o molecole dando
luogo ad un (talvolta verosimile) gradiente o differenziale termico;

* *Informazione genetica *è: informazione delle informazioni: moneta
biologica che riempie e determina la vita: comunicazione−trasmissione
genomica da cui dipende la *forma* struttural/funzionale o
funzional/strutturale degli organismi umani, animali e vegetali; energia
vitale connessa al codice inscritto nei geni: alla base del passaggio della
ricerca biologica dal metabolismo alla genetica;

* *Informazione matematica*: teoria strutturale delle proprietà statistiche
della fonte implicante studi di ingegneria della trasmissione
dell’informazione relativi a processi che trasmettono unità di informazione
non significanti; secondo Shannon e Weaver  [140] l’informazione è il
valore di equi probabilità che si realizza tra molte possibilità
combinatorie ed è direttamente proporzionale all’*entropia *(misurata in
bit) di un dato sistema ;

* *Informazione semiotico**−**semantica*: teoria strutturale delle
proprietà generative di un s−codice che sottendono processi in cui unità
significanti di informazione sono trasmesse a fini comunicativi; l’s−codice
sovrapposto alla equiprobabilità del sistema lo domina comunicativamente,
riducendone l’informazione matematica, ma rendendo possibile la
comunicazione di significati selezionati, trasmessi e ricevuti.

Se l’informazione può essere definita sia come entropia sia come neg−entropia,
questo discende dal fatto che nel primo caso si tratta di informazione
matematica, nel secondo caso di informazione semiotico−semantica. Allora
come si fa a dire o scrivere che l’informazione non ha niente a che vedere
con l’energia, quando l’energia è una forma di informazione e
l’informazione è una forma di energia?

Cari colleghi, Vi chiedo scusa per lo  stile espressivo (oltre che per la
lingua italiana) usato, oltre che per lo  schema assai sintetico che
propongo alla vostra significativa attenzione. Comunque, Vi ringrazio per
la compagnia che mi fate. Il tempo ci martirizza, rendendoci testimoni
della nostra e altrui storia. Un abbraccio affettuoso a tutti.

Francesco.








2018-05-31 17:28 GMT+02:00 Joseph Brenner :

> Stan,
>
>
>
> Good, but things can also run in the opposite direction. How about variety
> (plus more energy) generating more variety, more possibilities and allowing
> new ‘information’ to emerge? Standard logical analysis is inadequate
> because it cannot handle this picture.
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
> --
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Stanley
> N Salthe
> *Sent:* jeudi, 31 mai 2018 16:21
> *To:* Burgin, Mark; fis
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
>
>
>
> Mark -- What Shannon referred to as 'entropy' was 'variety'. 'Information'
> per se was achieved by way of a reduction or winnowing of this variety of
> possibilities, leaving 'information' to survive.
>
>
>
> STAN
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Burgin, Mark 
> wrote:
>
> Dear Loet,
> Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is
> Shannon's measure of information, which is called entropy.
>
> Sincerely,
> Mark
>
>
> On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>
> Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,
>
>
>
> The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between* res cogitans*
>  and* res extensa* as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case
> that things could have been different is not out there in the world as
> something seizable such as piece of wood.
>
>
>
> Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but
> it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others).
> The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to
> operationalize Descartes'* cogitans* and make it amenable to the
> measurement as information.
>
>
>
> Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by
> a system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-31 Thread Joseph Brenner
Stan,



Good, but things can also run in the opposite direction. How about variety
(plus more energy) generating more variety, more possibilities and allowing
new ‘information’ to emerge? Standard logical analysis is inadequate because
it cannot handle this picture.



Joseph



  _

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Stanley N
Salthe
Sent: jeudi, 31 mai 2018 16:21
To: Burgin, Mark; fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Mark -- What Shannon referred to as 'entropy' was 'variety'. 'Information'
per se was achieved by way of a reduction or winnowing of this variety of
possibilities, leaving 'information' to survive.



STAN



On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Burgin, Mark 
wrote:

Dear Loet,
Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is Shannon's
measure of information, which is called entropy.

Sincerely,
Mark




On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,



The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and
res extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that
things could have been different is not out there in the world as something
seizable such as piece of wood.



Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but it
can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others). The
grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to operationalize
Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the measurement as information.



Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a
system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer to
call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is
embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as
Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as physical.



In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical
entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a
distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this distribution
will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the probabilistic
entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 = .49 bits of
information. One thus can prove that this information is not physical.



Best,

Loet




  _


Loet Leydesdorff

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

 <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> l...@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex;

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Fellow,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;

http://scholar.google.com/
<http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en>
citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en





-- Original Message --

From: "Burgin, Mark" 

To: "Søren Brier" ; "Krassimir Markov" ;
<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es> "fis@listas.unizar.es" 

Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM

Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the
Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is real, or
it cannot be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes other
realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural Reality,” allows
understand information as real but not physical.

   Sincerely,
   Mark

On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

Dear Mark



Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that raises the
problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s theorem or
mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is subjectivity and
self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a conscious subject with
feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, measure it. Is it physical then?? I
only see what you write and your behavior. And are the meaning of your
sentences physical? So here we touch phenomenology (the experiential) and
hermeneutics (meaning and interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the
meaning of signs in cognition and communication). We have problems
encompassing these aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the
technical sciences that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of
information science.



  Best

  Søren



Fra: Fis  <mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>
 På vegne af Krassimir Markov
Sendt: 17. maj 2018 11:33
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark  <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>

Emne: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark and FIS Colleagu

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-31 Thread Stanley N Salthe
Mark -- What Shannon referred to as 'entropy' was 'variety'. 'Information'
per se was achieved by way of a reduction or winnowing of this variety of
possibilities, leaving 'information' to survive.

STAN

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Burgin, Mark 
wrote:

> Dear Loet,
> Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is
> Shannon's measure of information, which is called entropy.
>
> Sincerely,
> Mark
>
>
>
> On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>
> Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,
>
> The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between* res cogitans*
>  and* res extensa* as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case
> that things could have been different is not out there in the world as
> something seizable such as piece of wood.
>
> Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but
> it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others).
> The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to
> operationalize Descartes'* cogitans* and make it amenable to the
> measurement as information.
>
> Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by
> a system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer
> to call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is
> embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as
> Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as physical.
>
> In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical
> entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a
> distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this
> distribution will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the
> probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 =
> .49 bits of information. One thus can prove that this information is not
> physical.
>
> Best,
> Loet
>
> --
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
> Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>
> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en
>
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: "Burgin, Mark" 
> To: "Søren Brier" ; "Krassimir Markov" ;
> "fis@listas.unizar.es"  
> Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
>
> Dear Søren,
> You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the
> Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is real,
> or it cannot be real if it is not physical.
> Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes other
> realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural Reality,” allows
> understand information as real but not physical.
>
>Sincerely,
>Mark
>
> On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
> Dear Mark
>
>
>
> Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that raises
> the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s theorem or
> mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is subjectivity and
> self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a conscious subject with
> feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, measure it. Is it physical then?? I
> only see what you write and your behavior. And are the meaning of your
> sentences physical? So here we touch phenomenology (the experiential) and
> hermeneutics (meaning and interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the
> meaning of signs in cognition and communication). We have problems
> encompassing these aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the
> technical sciences that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of
> information science.
>
>
>
>   Best
>
>   Søren
>
>
>
> *Fra:* Fis   *På
> vegne af *Krassimir Markov
> *Sendt:* 17. maj 2018 11:33
> *Til:* fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark 
> 
> *Emne:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
>
>
>
> Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,
>
>
>
> First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to publish
> it in IJ ITA.
>
> It will be nice to continue our common work this way.
>
>
>

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-05-31 Thread Joseph Brenner
Dear All,



Information is physical and non-physical, simultaneously and sequentially.



Best regards,



Joseph



  _

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of
tozziart...@libero.it
Sent: jeudi, 31 mai 2018 08:34
To: fis@listas.unizar.es; Emanuel Diamant
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?



Dear Emanuel,

Hi!
I'm sorry, but the UCLA finding does not put an end to any question.
Indeed, this paper about memory transfer has been highly criticized:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/05/18/epic-snail-about-t
hat-injectable-memory-study/#.Ww-V81UzYps



The term "material" for the definition of information is less correct than
"physical": indeed, "pyhsical" encompasses also the quantum fields, the
solitons, the oscillations that, although not being properly "material",
nevertheless are able to tranfer "information".









Il 31 maggio 2018 alle 5.55 Emanuel Diamant  ha
scritto:

Dear FIS Colleagues,



For most of the time, I restrain myself from taking part in the FIS
discussions - we speak different languages and adhere to different
principles. My paper invited for publication in MDPI Informatics Special
Issue: Selected Papers from the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015 has been declined
for publication. (Never mind, it was published afterwards in the Research
Gate repository https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291352419 ).



In the concluding part of the paper I enumerate 8 topics in Neuroscience
research that require immediate revision taking into consideration the new
principles that follow from my definition of information. For example, that
information is a material, palpable string of letters and linguistic signs,
a piece of text, a textual description. That means that all derivatives of
semantic information (thoughts, memories, feelings, and so on) are material
entities ("Information as a thing" - once there was a fierce debate around
this subject). Or, as Mark Burgin claims: "Now assuming that information
exists, we have only one option, namely, to admit that information is
physical because only physical things exist". (I do not use the term
"physical", I distinguish Physical and Semantic Information. In place of
Burgin's "physical" I prefer to use the term "material").



I would not remind you of our old controversies but recently UCLA
researchers reported that they have transferred a memory from one marine
snail to another (Biologists 'transfer' a memory,
<https://medicalxpress.com/neuroscience-news/> Neuroscience ,
<https://medicalxpress.com/archive/14-05-2018/> May 14, 2018, University of
California, Los Angeles,
<https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html>
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html ).



I hope that the UCLA finding will put an end to the question "Is information
material (physical, in Burgin's inquiry)?" Yes, information is material.
Other options do not exist.





Best regards, Emanuel.






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Arturo Tozzi

AA Professor Physics, University North Texas

Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy

Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba

 <http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/> http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/



---
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel 
antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-05-31 Thread tozziarturo
Dear Emanuel, 

Hi!
I'm sorry, but the UCLA finding does not put an end to any question.  Indeed, 
this paper about memory transfer has been highly criticized:  

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/05/18/epic-snail-about-that-injectable-memory-study/#.Ww-V81UzYps


The term "material" for the definition of information is less correct than 
"physical": indeed, "pyhsical" encompasses also the quantum fields, the 
solitons, the oscillations that, although not being properly "material", 
nevertheless are able to tranfer "information".




> Il 31 maggio 2018 alle 5.55 Emanuel Diamant  ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
> 
>  
> 
> For most of the time, I restrain myself from taking part in the FIS 
> discussions – we speak different languages and adhere to different 
> principles. My paper invited for publication in MDPI Informatics Special 
> Issue: Selected Papers from the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015 has been declined for 
> publication. (Never mind, it was published afterwards in the Research Gate 
> repository https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291352419 ).
> 
>  
> 
> In the concluding part of the paper I enumerate 8 topics in Neuroscience 
> research that require immediate revision taking into consideration the new 
> principles that follow from my definition of information. For example, that 
> information is a material, palpable string of letters and linguistic signs, a 
> piece of text, a textual description. That means that all derivatives of 
> semantic information (thoughts, memories, feelings, and so on) are material 
> entities (“Information as a thing” – once there was a fierce debate around 
> this subject). Or, as Mark Burgin claims: ”Now assuming that information 
> exists, we have only one option, namely, to admit that information is 
> physical because only physical things exist”. (I do not use the term 
> “physical”, I distinguish Physical and Semantic Information. In place of 
> Burgin’s “physical” I prefer to use the term “material”).
> 
>  
> 
> I would not remind you of our old controversies but recently UCLA 
> researchers reported that they have transferred a memory from one marine 
> snail to another (Biologists 'transfer' a memory, Neuroscience 
> https://medicalxpress.com/neuroscience-news/ , May 14, 2018 
> https://medicalxpress.com/archive/14-05-2018/ , University of California, Los 
> Angeles, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html 
> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html ).
> 
>  
> 
> I hope that the UCLA finding will put an end to the question “Is 
> information material (physical, in Burgin’s inquiry)?” Yes, information is 
> material. Other options do not exist.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Best regards, Emanuel.
> 
>  
> 
 

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


Arturo Tozzi

AA Professor Physics, University North Texas

Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy

Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba

http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/ 
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Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-30 Thread Burgin, Mark

Dear Loet,
Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is 
Shannon's measure of information, which is called entropy.


Sincerely,
Mark



On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,

The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between/res 
cogitans/ and/res extensa/ as two different realities. Our knowledge 
in each case that things could have been different is not out there in 
the world as something seizable such as piece of wood.


Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, 
but it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among 
others). The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable 
us to operationalize Descartes'/cogitans/ and make it amenable to the 
measurement as information.


Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning 
by a system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of 
us prefer to call only thus-meaningful information real information 
because it is embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type 
information as Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as 
physical.


In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the 
physical entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles 
have a distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this 
distribution will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the 
probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – 
.37 = .49 bits of information. One thus can prove that this 
information is not physical.


Best,
Loet



Loet Leydesdorff

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

l...@leydesdorff.net <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net>; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of 
Sussex;


Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, 
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
<http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;


Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;

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


-- Original Message --
From: "Burgin, Mark" <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>>
To: "Søren Brier" mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>; "Krassimir 
Markov" mailto:mar...@foibg.com>>; 
"fis@listas.unizar.es" <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>>

Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the 
Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is 
real, or it cannot be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes 
other realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural 
Reality,” allows understand information as real but not physical.


Sincerely,
   Mark

On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:


Dear Mark

Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that 
raises the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s 
theorem or mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is 
subjectivity and self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a 
conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, 
measure it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write and your 
behavior. And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we 
touch phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and 
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs 
in cognition and communication). We have problems encompassing these 
aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the technical sciences 
that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of information science.


  Best

  Søren

*Fra:*Fis  *På vegne af *Krassimir Markov
*Sendt:* 17. maj 2018 11:33
*Til:* fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark 
*Emne:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,

First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to 
publish it in IJ ITA.


It will be nice to continue our common work this way.

At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on

*Is information physical?*

was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss 
and to come to some conclusions.


I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.

What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.

For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.

Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the 
Infos consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.


Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
r

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-25 Thread Christophe Menant
Dear Soren,
What I try to say is that the Piercean triadic pragmatic semiotics includes 
‘meaning’ as generated by the Interpreter but does not tell much about the 
nature of that meaning. And this lack makes difficult to adress questions like: 
what is the reason of being of a meaning?, what can be its content? its 
purpose?, what are its relations with information?, how can it be applied to 
animals and humans (and to AAs)?,  is a meaning always meaningful? and for 
which entities?, ...
Theses questions should be part, I feel, of a transdiciplinarity semiotic 
process philosophy. And I don’t see very well how they can be taken into 
account without the availability of a description or modeling of the 
Interpreter.
Did I miss something?
Best
Christophe





De : Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>
Envoyé : vendredi 25 mai 2018 13:13
À : Christophe Menant; fis@listas.unizar.es
Objet : RE: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Christoph



I am not sure what you mean. In my understanding the important dynamics in 
Peirce’s pragmaticist semiotics is that symbols grow and create habits in a web 
of signs in nature as well as in culture viewing the central dynamic process in 
the cosmos as well as man  to be of symbolic nature that through evolution and 
history develops reasoning in many interlocking dimension.



Best

   Søren



From: Christophe Menant <christophe.men...@hotmail.fr>
Sent: 25. maj 2018 09:08
To: Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: RE: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Soren,
You are right to recall that a transdisciplinary theory of cognition and 
communication has to include meaning. But I’m not sure that the Peircean 
approach is enough for that.
The triad (Object, Sign, Interpretant) positions the Interpretant as being the 
meaning of the Sign created by the Interpreter. But Peirce does not tell much 
about a possible content of the Interpreter. He does not tell what is for him a 
process of meaning generation. And this, I feel,  should bring us to be 
cautious about using Peirce in subjects dealing with meaning generation.
Best
Christophe





De : Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>> de 
la part de Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>
Envoyé : jeudi 24 mai 2018 17:44
À : Loet Leydesdorff; Burgin, Mark; Krassimir Markov; 
fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark, Loet and others



My point was that all the aspects I mention are part of a reality that is 
bigger than what we can grasp under the realm of physical science. Reality is 
bigger than physicalism. Quantitative forms of information measurements can be 
useful in many ways, but they are not sufficient for at transdisciplinary 
theory of cognition and communication. As Loet write then we have to include 
meaning. In what framework can we do that? The natural science do not have 
experience and meaning in their conceptual foundations. We can try to develop a 
logical approach like Mark and Peirce do. Where Mark stays in the structural 
dimension and Loet wants to  enter res cogitans by probability measures, , 
maybe because a  philosophical framework that does not allow meaning to be 
real. But Peirce keeps working with the metaphysical stipulations until he 
reaches a framework that can integrate experience, meaning and logic in one 
theory, namely his triadic pragmaticist semiotics. I am fascinated by it 
because I think it is unique, but many researcher do not want to use it, 
because its change in metaphysics in developing out of Descartes dualism, all 
though most of us agrees that it is too limited to work in the modern 
scientific ontology of irreversible time, that Prigogine developed. Who other 
than Peirce has developed on non-dualist non-foundationalist transdisciplinary 
semiotic process philosophy integrating animal (biosemiotics), human evolution, 
history and language development in a consistent theory of the development of 
human consciousness?



Best

   Søren





From: l...@leydesdorff.net<mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> 
<leydesdo...@gmail.com<mailto:leydesdo...@gmail.com>> On Behalf Of Loet 
Leydesdorff
Sent: 24. maj 2018 07:45
To: Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>>; Søren 
Brier <sbr@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>; Krassimir Markov 
<mar...@foibg.com<mailto:mar...@foibg.com>>; 
fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re[2]: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,



The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and res 
extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-25 Thread Søren Brier
Dear Christoph

I am not sure what you mean. In my understanding the important dynamics in 
Peirce's pragmaticist semiotics is that symbols grow and create habits in a web 
of signs in nature as well as in culture viewing the central dynamic process in 
the cosmos as well as man  to be of symbolic nature that through evolution and 
history develops reasoning in many interlocking dimension.

Best
   Søren

From: Christophe Menant <christophe.men...@hotmail.fr>
Sent: 25. maj 2018 09:08
To: Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: RE: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Soren,
You are right to recall that a transdisciplinary theory of cognition and 
communication has to include meaning. But I'm not sure that the Peircean 
approach is enough for that.
The triad (Object, Sign, Interpretant) positions the Interpretant as being the 
meaning of the Sign created by the Interpreter. But Peirce does not tell much 
about a possible content of the Interpreter. He does not tell what is for him a 
process of meaning generation. And this, I feel,  should bring us to be 
cautious about using Peirce in subjects dealing with meaning generation.
Best
Christophe


De : Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>> de 
la part de Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>
Envoyé : jeudi 24 mai 2018 17:44
À : Loet Leydesdorff; Burgin, Mark; Krassimir Markov; 
fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Mark, Loet and others



My point was that all the aspects I mention are part of a reality that is 
bigger than what we can grasp under the realm of physical science. Reality is 
bigger than physicalism. Quantitative forms of information measurements can be 
useful in many ways, but they are not sufficient for at transdisciplinary 
theory of cognition and communication. As Loet write then we have to include 
meaning. In what framework can we do that? The natural science do not have 
experience and meaning in their conceptual foundations. We can try to develop a 
logical approach like Mark and Peirce do. Where Mark stays in the structural 
dimension and Loet wants to  enter res cogitans by probability measures, , 
maybe because a  philosophical framework that does not allow meaning to be 
real. But Peirce keeps working with the metaphysical stipulations until he 
reaches a framework that can integrate experience, meaning and logic in one 
theory, namely his triadic pragmaticist semiotics. I am fascinated by it 
because I think it is unique, but many researcher do not want to use it, 
because its change in metaphysics in developing out of Descartes dualism, all 
though most of us agrees that it is too limited to work in the modern 
scientific ontology of irreversible time, that Prigogine developed. Who other 
than Peirce has developed on non-dualist non-foundationalist transdisciplinary 
semiotic process philosophy integrating animal (biosemiotics), human evolution, 
history and language development in a consistent theory of the development of 
human consciousness?



Best

   Søren





From: l...@leydesdorff.net<mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> 
<leydesdo...@gmail.com<mailto:leydesdo...@gmail.com>> On Behalf Of Loet 
Leydesdorff
Sent: 24. maj 2018 07:45
To: Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>>; Søren 
Brier <sbr@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>; Krassimir Markov 
<mar...@foibg.com<mailto:mar...@foibg.com>>; 
fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re[2]: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,



The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and res 
extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that things 
could have been different is not out there in the world as something seizable 
such as piece of wood.



Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but it 
can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others). The 
grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to operationalize 
Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the measurement as information.



Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a 
system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer to 
call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is embedded. 
One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as Bateson-type 
information. The latter can be debated as physical.



In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical 
entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a distribution 
of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, th

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-25 Thread Mark Johnson
Dear Søren

I have been interested in Peirce for a long time, but while I've found it
an interesting explanatory framework, I've tended to not find it as
practically useful as other (cybernetic) ways of thinking. I'm puzzled by
this: I think the problem might have something to do with the difference
between "logic" and "explanation", or to be more precise, the different
between a process explanation and a process logic.

Logic is not explanation. It provides a way of generating expectations.
>From a logic, we are able to construct a view on "What might happen". From
that, we can make observations about "What might have happened, but did
not" (which is what Ashby considered to the science of the cybernetician).

Peirce's work is split with regard to logic. Clearly, the existential
graphs are logic (similar to Spencer-Brown and (thanks to Lou for this)
Lewis Carroll). But the semiotic triad? It's an attempt to explain, isn't
it? And in the hands of media studies, it becomes dogmatic (this is an
index, this is an interpretant, etc). How can one use it to make
predictions and test them? And is it really non-foundationalist? It looks
rather like Naturphilosophie, I would suggest...

Cybernetic models, on the other hand, do (I think) articulate a process
logic. It's in McCulloch's "Logic of nervous nets", Ashby's Law, Beer's
VSM, Bateson's Double bind, Howard's Paradoxes of Rationality, and
Shannon's information. And there are deeper formal logics which capture
this - like Lupasco/Brenner, and (maybe) Spencer-Brown. Some of these have
been practically useful - notably, Shannon, Beer, Bateson and Howard - and
Ashby sits behind all of it. And even in generating explanations, I think
Beer's logic of cybernetic transduction is a much better fit to cell-cell
transduction, than Peirce (for example).

There's so much that's tantalising in Peirce (like the quaternions which
hang in the background of his whole family, and which could well be where
he got his triadic obsession from), but it's not clear to me that it all
joins up quite as successfully as you suggest.

Unless I'm missing something...

Best wishes,

Mark

On 24 May 2018 16:47, "Søren Brier" <sbr@cbs.dk> wrote:

Dear Mark, Loet and others



My point was that all the aspects I mention are part of a reality that is
bigger than what we can grasp under the realm of physical science. Reality
is bigger than physicalism. Quantitative forms of information measurements
can be useful in many ways, but they are not sufficient for at
transdisciplinary theory of cognition and communication. As Loet write then
we have to include meaning. In what framework can we do that? The natural
science do not have experience and meaning in their conceptual foundations.
We can try to develop a logical approach like Mark and Peirce do. Where
Mark stays in the structural dimension and Loet wants to  enter res
cogitans by probability measures, , maybe because a  philosophical
framework that does not allow meaning to be real. But Peirce keeps working
with the metaphysical stipulations until he reaches a framework that can
integrate experience, meaning and logic in one theory, namely his triadic
pragmaticist semiotics. I am fascinated by it because I think it is unique,
but many researcher do not want to use it, because its change in
metaphysics in developing out of Descartes dualism, all though most of us
agrees that it is too limited to work in the modern scientific ontology of
irreversible time, that Prigogine developed. Who other than Peirce has
developed on non-dualist non-foundationalist transdisciplinary semiotic
process philosophy integrating animal (biosemiotics), human evolution,
history and language development in a consistent theory of the development
of human consciousness?



Best

   Søren





*From:* l...@leydesdorff.net <leydesdo...@gmail.com> *On Behalf Of *Loet
Leydesdorff
*Sent:* 24. maj 2018 07:45
*To:* Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>; Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>;
Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com>; fis@listas.unizar.es
*Subject:* Re[2]: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,



The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between* res cogitans* and*
res extensa* as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that
things could have been different is not out there in the world as something
seizable such as piece of wood.



Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but
it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others).
The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to
operationalize Descartes'* cogitans* and make it amenable to the
measurement as information.



Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a
system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer
t

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-25 Thread Christophe Menant
Dear Soren,
You are right to recall that a transdisciplinary theory of cognition and 
communication has to include meaning. But I’m not sure that the Peircean 
approach is enough for that.
The triad (Object, Sign, Interpretant) positions the Interpretant as being the 
meaning of the Sign created by the Interpreter. But Peirce does not tell much 
about a possible content of the Interpreter. He does not tell what is for him a 
process of meaning generation. And this, I feel,  should bring us to be 
cautious about using Peirce in subjects dealing with meaning generation.
Best
Christophe



De : Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> de la part de Søren Brier 
<sbr@cbs.dk>
Envoyé : jeudi 24 mai 2018 17:44
À : Loet Leydesdorff; Burgin, Mark; Krassimir Markov; fis@listas.unizar.es
Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Mark, Loet and others



My point was that all the aspects I mention are part of a reality that is 
bigger than what we can grasp under the realm of physical science. Reality is 
bigger than physicalism. Quantitative forms of information measurements can be 
useful in many ways, but they are not sufficient for at transdisciplinary 
theory of cognition and communication. As Loet write then we have to include 
meaning. In what framework can we do that? The natural science do not have 
experience and meaning in their conceptual foundations. We can try to develop a 
logical approach like Mark and Peirce do. Where Mark stays in the structural 
dimension and Loet wants to  enter res cogitans by probability measures, , 
maybe because a  philosophical framework that does not allow meaning to be 
real. But Peirce keeps working with the metaphysical stipulations until he 
reaches a framework that can integrate experience, meaning and logic in one 
theory, namely his triadic pragmaticist semiotics. I am fascinated by it 
because I think it is unique, but many researcher do not want to use it, 
because its change in metaphysics in developing out of Descartes dualism, all 
though most of us agrees that it is too limited to work in the modern 
scientific ontology of irreversible time, that Prigogine developed. Who other 
than Peirce has developed on non-dualist non-foundationalist transdisciplinary 
semiotic process philosophy integrating animal (biosemiotics), human evolution, 
history and language development in a consistent theory of the development of 
human consciousness?



Best

   Søren





From: l...@leydesdorff.net <leydesdo...@gmail.com> On Behalf Of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: 24. maj 2018 07:45
To: Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>; Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>; 
Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com>; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re[2]: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,



The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and res 
extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that things 
could have been different is not out there in the world as something seizable 
such as piece of wood.



Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but it 
can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others). The 
grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to operationalize 
Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the measurement as information.



Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a 
system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer to 
call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is embedded. 
One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as Bateson-type 
information. The latter can be debated as physical.



In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical 
entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a distribution 
of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this distribution will change in 
the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 
(.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 = .49 bits of information. One thus can 
prove that this information is not physical.



Best,

Loet





Loet Leydesdorff

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

l...@leydesdorff.net <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> University of Sussex;

Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ.<http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, Hangzhou; 
Visiting Professor, ISTIC, <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> Beijing;

Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;

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





-- Original Message --

From: "Burgin, Mark" &l

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-24 Thread Søren Brier
Dear Mark, Loet and others

My point was that all the aspects I mention are part of a reality that is 
bigger than what we can grasp under the realm of physical science. Reality is 
bigger than physicalism. Quantitative forms of information measurements can be 
useful in many ways, but they are not sufficient for at transdisciplinary 
theory of cognition and communication. As Loet write then we have to include 
meaning. In what framework can we do that? The natural science do not have 
experience and meaning in their conceptual foundations. We can try to develop a 
logical approach like Mark and Peirce do. Where Mark stays in the structural 
dimension and Loet wants to  enter res cogitans by probability measures, , 
maybe because a  philosophical framework that does not allow meaning to be 
real. But Peirce keeps working with the metaphysical stipulations until he 
reaches a framework that can integrate experience, meaning and logic in one 
theory, namely his triadic pragmaticist semiotics. I am fascinated by it 
because I think it is unique, but many researcher do not want to use it, 
because its change in metaphysics in developing out of Descartes dualism, all 
though most of us agrees that it is too limited to work in the modern 
scientific ontology of irreversible time, that Prigogine developed. Who other 
than Peirce has developed on non-dualist non-foundationalist transdisciplinary 
semiotic process philosophy integrating animal (biosemiotics), human evolution, 
history and language development in a consistent theory of the development of 
human consciousness?

Best
   Søren


From: l...@leydesdorff.net <leydesdo...@gmail.com> On Behalf Of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: 24. maj 2018 07:45
To: Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>; Søren Brier <sbr@cbs.dk>; 
Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com>; fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re[2]: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,

The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans and res 
extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case that things 
could have been different is not out there in the world as something seizable 
such as piece of wood.

Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, but it 
can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among others). The 
grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us to operationalize 
Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the measurement as information.

Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning by a 
system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us prefer to 
call only thus-meaningful information real information because it is embedded. 
One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type information as Bateson-type 
information. The latter can be debated as physical.

In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the physical 
entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles have a distribution 
of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this distribution will change in 
the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 
(.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 = .49 bits of information. One thus can 
prove that this information is not physical.

Best,
Loet


Loet Leydesdorff
Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
l...@leydesdorff.net <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> University of Sussex;
Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ.<http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, Hangzhou; 
Visiting Professor, ISTIC, <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> Beijing;
Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ=en



-- Original Message --
From: "Burgin, Mark" <mbur...@math.ucla.edu<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>>
To: "Søren Brier" <sbr@cbs.dk<mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>; "Krassimir Markov" 
<mar...@foibg.com<mailto:mar...@foibg.com>>; 
"fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>" 
<fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>>
Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the Physical 
World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is real, or it cannot 
be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes other 
realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural Reality,” allows 
understand information as real but not physical.

   Sincerely,
   Mark
On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier w

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-24 Thread Dai Griffiths

Thanks Lou, you are surely right to point out the object-nature of concepts.

>There is no escape from sooner or later realizing that 2 exists only 
in the mind or in the Mind.


Indeed. Our minds are full of such concepts. It seems that one of the 
important activities of the mind is to generate 'things' from the 
processes that impinge upon us. This makes living our lives much simpler 
(we don't need to set about curating the collection of all couples).


>Mind as eigenform never happens except at the limit where 
self-reference occurs.


I found it useful to read your paper on that is to be found at 
eigenforms http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Eigen.pdf.


Best

Dai

On 24/05/18 05:08, Louis H Kauffman wrote:

Dai,
I start down a road toward attempting to understand information by 
first understanding number and form.

|
||
|||

|
…

Is a number a thing?
Is 2 a thing?
Cannot say that this 2, this || “is” two. Rather it partakes in being 
a couple.
2 is relational. We say that there are 2 signs in the word “is" 
because a standard couple can be matched to the i and the s.

There is a potential process behind the concept 2.
2 is a concept, but you cannot point to any existent “thing” and say 
“that is 2”.

You can only say there are 2 of them here, indicating relationship.
So process can also be subordinate to the existence of a something if 
that something is a concept.

Numbers exist.
Numbers are concepts.
Numbers are related to processes of matching and comparing.
But numbers are not these processes only.
No thing is so real as the number 2.
Numbers are at the base of what we mean by information.
Do you want the actual couples to somehow allow 2 to emerge in the 
proliferation of many many couples?

Russel said: “2 is the collection of all couples.”
Are you convinced that the collection of all possible couples captures 
the concept of 2?

I doubt it unless you take collection to be a verb.
There is no escape from sooner or later realizing that 2 exists only 
in the mind or in the Mind.
Mind as eigenform never happens except at the limit where 
self-reference occurs.

I am the observed link between myself and observing myself (HVF).
Lou


On May 17, 2018, at 6:44 AM, Dai Griffiths > wrote:


What is a 'thing'?

Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that  only processes exist, 
and that for human convenience in living in the world we put 
conceptual membranes around some parts of those processes and call 
them 'things'. From this point of view we do not have two aspects 
(things and predictions about those things), but simply the 
monitoring of processes, and theorising about what we find. This does 
not preclude a taxonomy of processes (e.g. mechanisms might be a 
special kind of process).


Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully 
reformulated as "Is information a thing?".


Dai


On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:


Dear FISers,

I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I 
got an idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes 
two kind of philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to 
the existence of things) and predicative (what can we say and know 
about things). Against Quine materialism I came across the idea that 
ontological problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting 
problem. The fact is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All 
we have as scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think 
of Science as a communicative social system differentiated from its 
environment by means of a code -I think Loet would agree with me in 
this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but the set 
of statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are 
many ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I 
confess I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I 
think I have many points of agreement with him but also of 
disagreement -but honestly I currently lack the knowledge to 
undertake a thorough discussion). Self-reference, I think, is one of 
the most coherent ways to deal with it. But this means we have to 
learn to deal with paradoxes.
Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the 
constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in 
a set of statements that represent what we know about information. 
The problem is that although we can have the intuition that 
information is real, physical as has been said, it cannot be proved. 
An external reference like "reality ", if we look carefully, acts as 
regulatory function within the system. I remember that in the 
"Science of the Society", Luhmann devised the concept of consistency 
proofs (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an sich, is 
inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be 
asking us a question that cannot be answered.


Best,

JJ

El may 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-23 Thread Loet Leydesdorff

Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,

The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between res cogitans 
and res extensa as two different realities. Our knowledge in each case 
that things could have been different is not out there in the world as 
something seizable such as piece of wood.


Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, 
but it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among 
others). The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable us 
to operationalize Descartes' cogitans and make it amenable to the 
measurement as information.


Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning 
by a system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of us 
prefer to call only thus-meaningful information real information because 
it is embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type 
information as Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as 
physical.


In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the 
physical entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles 
have a distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this 
distribution will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the 
probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – .37 
= .49 bits of information. One thus can prove that this information is 
not physical.


Best,
Loet


Loet Leydesdorff

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

l...@leydesdorff.net <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net>; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of 
Sussex;


Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, 
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
<http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;


Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;

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


-- Original Message --
From: "Burgin, Mark" <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
To: "Søren Brier" <sbr@cbs.dk>; "Krassimir Markov" 
<mar...@foibg.com>; "fis@listas.unizar.es" <fis@listas.unizar.es>

Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the 
Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is 
real, or it cannot be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes other 
realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural Reality,” 
allows understand information as real but not physical.


   Sincerely,
   Mark

On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

Dear Mark



Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that 
raises the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s 
theorem or mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is 
subjectivity and self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a 
conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, measure 
it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write and your behavior. 
And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we touch 
phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and 
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs in 
cognition and communication). We have problems encompassing these 
aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the technical sciences 
that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of information 
science.




  Best

  Søren



Fra: Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> 
<mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es>På vegne af Krassimir Markov

Sendt: 17. maj 2018 11:33
Til:fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu> 
<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>

Emne: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis



Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,



First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to 
publish it in IJ ITA.


It will be nice to continue our common work this way.



At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on

Is information physical?

was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss and 
to come to some conclusions.




I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.



What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.





For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.



Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the Infos 
consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.




Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
relationships “between” and/or “in” real (physical) entities as 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-23 Thread Louis H Kauffman
Dai,
I start down a road toward attempting to understand information by first 
understanding number and form.
|
||
|||

|
…

Is a number a thing?
Is 2 a thing?
Cannot say that this 2, this || “is” two. Rather it partakes in being a couple.
2 is relational. We say that there are 2 signs in the word “is" because a 
standard couple can be matched to the i and the s.
There is a potential process behind the concept 2.
2 is a concept, but you cannot point to any existent “thing” and say “that is 
2”.
You can only say there are 2 of them here, indicating relationship.
So process can also be subordinate to the existence of a something if that 
something is a concept.
Numbers exist.
Numbers are concepts.
Numbers are related to processes of matching and comparing.
But numbers are not these processes only.
No thing is so real as the number 2.
Numbers are at the base of what we mean by information.
Do you want the actual couples to somehow allow 2 to emerge in the 
proliferation of many many couples?
Russel said: “2 is the collection of all couples.”
Are you convinced that the collection of all possible couples captures the 
concept of 2?
I doubt it unless you take collection to be a verb.
There is no escape from sooner or later realizing that 2 exists only in the 
mind or in the Mind.
Mind as eigenform never happens except at the limit where self-reference occurs.
I am the observed link between myself and observing myself (HVF).
Lou


> On May 17, 2018, at 6:44 AM, Dai Griffiths  wrote:
> 
> What is a 'thing'? 
> Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that  only processes exist, and that 
> for human convenience in living in the world we put conceptual membranes 
> around some parts of those processes and call them 'things'. From this point 
> of view we do not have two aspects (things and predictions about those 
> things), but simply the monitoring of processes, and theorising about what we 
> find. This does not preclude a taxonomy of processes (e.g. mechanisms might 
> be a special kind of process).
> Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully reformulated 
> as "Is information a thing?".
> Dai
> 
> 
> On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:
>> Dear FISers,
>> 
>> I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I got an 
>> idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two kind of 
>> philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the existence of 
>> things) and predicative (what can we say and know about things). Against 
>> Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological problems are 
>> undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem. The fact is that we cannot 
>> leave the predicative realm. All we have as scientists is scientifical 
>> statements (therefore I think of Science as a communicative social system 
>> differentiated from its environment by means of a code -I think Loet would 
>> agree with me in this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but 
>> the set of statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are 
>> many ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess 
>> I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have many 
>> points of agreement with him but also of disagreement -but honestly I 
>> currently lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough discussion). 
>> Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent ways to deal with it. 
>> But this means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes. 
>> Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the 
>> constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a set of 
>> statements that represent what we know about information. The problem is 
>> that although we can have the intuition that information is real, physical 
>> as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external reference like "reality 
>> ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory function within the system. I 
>> remember that in the "Science of the Society", Luhmann devised the concept 
>> of consistency proofs (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an 
>> sich, is inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be 
>> asking us a question that cannot be answered.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> JJ
>> 
>> El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark" > > escribió:
>>Dear FISers,
>>It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and 
>> creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many 
>> interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I 
>> would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our 
>> intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.
>> 
>>To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is information 
>> physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical means 
>> the nature of 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis - Can it be Improved?

2018-05-23 Thread Burgin, Mark

Dear Jerry, Joseph and all FISers,
The title of my contribution is Logical Analysis but not Formal Logical 
Analysis. It means that I did not use any formal logic but thoroughly 
applied simple mundane logic, which is frequently used in everyday life.


   Sincerely,
   Mark



On 5/18/2018 8:45 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

Mark, List:

I find your analysis to be curious from the perspective of scientific 
information theories - that is, the nature of scientific beliefs that 
are used to do science pragmatically - in physics, engr., chemistry, 
biology and medicine. The practice of scientific information uses 
well-established symbol systems, abstractions that relate meaning of 
experience to symbolic meaning in the mind.  Mental images (indices, 
icons, symbols, diagrams, etc,) are systematically manipulated within 
the particular framework of the scientific problem at hand, the focus 
of the inquiry.


The internal representation of the situation under investigation is 
only a private interpretation of the external objects. It is created 
by the various sense organs, for example the critical roles of the 
senses of touch, smell, hearing, etc are essential to the natural 
sciences.


So, who can define the meaning of the (mathematical?) varieties of 
“our model of the world”?
How will such a “model” (path?, category?,)  relate the static to the 
dynamic that we experience in our daily inquiries?


Let me skip directly to the categorizational logic:
Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which 
comprises three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the 
world of structures, we have seven options assuming that information 
exists:

- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is both structural and mental
- information is physical, structural and mental


Given your premises, I concur with your conclusions.  But...

Philosophically, how does this logic differ from the Vienna Circle 
logic of “Unity of Science” of the 1930’s?


Can you expand the premises to include the processing of informational 
flows in the natural sciences?


It seems to me that the meaning to be associated with this 
categorization is obscured by the usage of the term, structural.

For examples:
Physical information can be considered structured.
Mathematical equations are often considered as structures.
Mental processes are dependent on anatomical structures.
Is time structured?

Where does this categorization take account of the mathematical 
representations of molecular biology, genetics, biological dynamics, 
human diseases, all of which depend on the handedness of biochemical 
isomers and Penrose twistors?


Within this categorization, how are the processes of communication 
represented?


Or, is communication not a component of the purposes for developing 
the categorization?


My personal philosophy is that categorizations are always for a goal, 
purpose, objective, intent, etc.  Thus, many many philosophers have 
proposed categorical theories.


It appears that this proposed categorization of information could be 
improved by addressing the symbol systems used in the biological and 
other sciences. That is, addressing the forms of abstraction that 
relate representation to (in-) forms of physical structures.


Cheers

Jerry





On May 16, 2018, at 9:20 PM, Burgin, Mark > wrote:


   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent 
and creative individuals participated expressing different points of 
view. Many interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this 
discussion, I would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem 
based on our intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.


   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is 
information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that 
here physical means the nature of information and not its substance, 
or more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which can be physical, 
chemical biological or quantum. By the way, expression “quantum 
information” is only the way of expressing that the carrier of 
information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar 
to the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are 
only forms or number representations and not numbers themselves.


  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at 
first, to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers 
assume that information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate 
in our discussions. However, some people think differently (cf., for 
example, Furner, J. (2004) Information studies without information).


   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, 
namely, to admit that information is physical because only physical 
things exist.
   

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-23 Thread Burgin, Mark

Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the 
Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is 
real, or it cannot be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes other 
realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural Reality,” 
allows understand information as real but not physical.


Sincerely,
   Mark

On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:


Dear Mark

Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that 
raises the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s 
theorem or mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is 
subjectivity and self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a 
conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, measure 
it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write and your behavior. 
And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we touch 
phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and 
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs in 
cognition and communication). We have problems encompassing these 
aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the technical sciences 
that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of information science.


  Best

  Søren

*Fra:*Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> *På vegne af *Krassimir Markov
*Sendt:* 17. maj 2018 11:33
*Til:* fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
*Emne:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,

First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to 
publish it in IJ ITA.


It will be nice to continue our common work this way.

At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on

*Is information physical?*

was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss and 
to come to some conclusions.


I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.

What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.

For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.

Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the Infos 
consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.


Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
relationships “between” and/or “in” real (physical) entities as well 
as “between” and/or “in” mental (physical) entities.


I.e. “physical” include “mental” include “structural”.

Finally, IF  “information is physical, structural and mental” THEN 
simply the  “information is physical”!


Friendly greetings

Krassimir

*From:*Burgin, Mark <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>

*Sent:*Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:20 AM

*To:*fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>

*Subject:*Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent 
and creative individuals participated expressing different points of 
view. Many interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this 
discussion, I would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem 
based on our intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.


   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is 
information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that 
here physical means the nature of information and not its substance, 
or more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which can be physical, 
chemical biological or quantum. By the way, expression “quantum 
information” is only the way of expressing that the carrier of 
information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar to 
the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only 
forms or number representations and not numbers themselves.


  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at 
first, to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers 
assume that information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate 
in our discussions. However, some people think differently (cf., for 
example, Furner, J. (2004) Information studies without information).


   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, 
namely, to admit that information is physical because only physical 
things exist.
   If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, 
we have three options assuming that information exists:

- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental

Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises 
three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of 
structures, we have seven options assuming that information exists:

- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is both structural and mental
-

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-21 Thread tozziarturo

Dear Bruno, 
You state that:
"When poll are done at congress in cosmology or quantum computing, about half 
of the physicists endorse the non collapse theory, as it is covariant, and has 
no “measurement problem”.
This means that the main tenet of your account, your "First Principle", is not 
accepted by HALF of the scholars.
How can you build your huge building on a so much controversial claim?
Furthermore, your links with Tegmark and Benacerraf confirm my thesis: your 
account is a philosophical one, based on a logical principle, that, although 
fashinating and intriguing, is highly controversial.  The results in common 
with the scientific knowledge are just coincidental, I believe.  On the other 
side, Robert Grosseteste talks about the big bang in 1228, based on simple 
logical accounts, and Eraclitus talks about the vacuum.  Just coincidences.  
--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Android lunedì, 21 maggio 2018, 00:16PM +02:00 da 
Bruno Marchal  marc...@ulb.ac.be :

>Dear Arturo,
>
>This is already my second post of this week, so you might answer to my two 
>posts, and I will comment your possible answer (if necessary) next week. Thank 
>you.
>
>
>>On 20 May 2018, at 19:30,  tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
>>Dear Bruno,  
>>You talk about "some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also in the 
>>arithmetical reality)".
>>This way of reasoning throws us into the realm of the philosophy of 
>>mathematics, in which you clearly pursue a neo-platonism in the traces of 
>>Tegmark, Godel, Husserl, Tiles, against Carnap, Hilbert, Stuart Mill, 
>>Poincare', Brouwer, Lakoff & Nunez, Dehaene, Maddy, Field, Lakatos, 
>>Benacerraf.   
>>
>
>Well, actually it is Tegmark which follows my lead, as he sent me his first 
>draft of the “mathematical universe”, and took my suggestion into account when 
>adding computationalism, but he missed the 1P/3p distinction, so my older 
>studies remains more consistent. Actually, he cite my papers in the draft, but 
>I guess was not able to maintain it for publication. Many told me that there 
>is some resistance, not to my ideas, but personal or political (I don’t know 
>as I have never met such opponents).
>But I have been influenced by Benacerraf and also Judson Webb, etc. (and of 
>course Gödel, Hilbert, etc.).
>
>Yet my approach is different. I start from the computationalist hypothesis, 
>and everything I say is derived from it, first informally (the universal 
>dovetailer argument) and formally (in the more mathematical part).
>
>
>>Your idea is interesting and intriguing,  related as it is to the philosophy 
>>of mathematics. 
>It can be related to philosophy of mathematics, but that is a work which 
>remains to be done. 
>
>>However, your idea has nothing to do with the concepts of scientific method 
>>and of testable hypothesis. 
>That is not correct. I prove that if Mechanism is true, the physical reality 
>is “in the head of the universal Turing machine”. 
>That makes Mechanism testable, by comparing the physics which is in the head 
>of the machine with the physics that we infer from observation. When I was 
>young I concluded that Mechanism is refuted, but I was naive and ignorant of 
>quantum mechanics, which eventually confirmed all the weirdness that I got 
>from mechanism, like indeterminacy, non locality, non cloning, the possibility 
>of many “parallel” computations/worlds and the possibility to extract a 
>material sort of information (confirmed by the notion of quantum information). 
>A lot of works remains to be done, but until now, mechanism is confirmed by 
>nature, when physicalism + mechanism is refuted by nature. Physicalism + non 
>mechanism is still an option, though, but is it really plausible? I don’t 
>know. As a scientist, I do not defend any options. I just show mechanism 
>testable and confirmed up to now.
>
>
>
>
>>You are talking about philosophy, not about science.   
>>
>
>The complete contrary. I avoid doing philosophy. That is especially important 
>when tacking some philosophical questions (at least classify as such by 
>Aristotelians) and show them testable experimentally. 
>
>
>>I feel myself closer to the scientific method than to the logic underlying 
>>the philosophy, therefore I prefer to spend my time in reading scientific 
>>papers.   
>
>Then study well my papers, because there is no statements which are not 
>testable. The whole goal of my work was to show that metaphysics and theology, 
>in the frame of some hypothesis, become amenable to the scientific method.I 
>literally predicted quantum mechanics from pure arithmetic + mechanism a long 
>time ago. Then my thesis shows that all universal machine finds this when 
>looking inward (in the sense of Gödel’s self-reference).
>
>
>>Possibly innovative, always deeply grounded in an experimental context.   
>>
>
>I am with you on this. It is the whole point of my research. Too show that 
>thanks to Gödel’s and Turing’s discovery, and some works, we can test today if 
>Aristotle 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-21 Thread Bruno Marchal
Dear Arturo,

This is already my second post of this week, so you might answer to my two 
posts, and I will comment your possible answer (if necessary) next week. Thank 
you.


> On 20 May 2018, at 19:30, tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
> 
> Dear Bruno, 
> You talk about "some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also in the 
> arithmetical reality)".
> This way of reasoning throws us into the realm of the philosophy of 
> mathematics, in which you clearly pursue a neo-platonism in the traces of 
> Tegmark, Godel, Husserl, Tiles, against Carnap, Hilbert, Stuart Mill, 
> Poincare', Brouwer, Lakoff & Nunez, Dehaene, Maddy, Field, Lakatos, 
> Benacerraf.  
> 
> 

Well, actually it is Tegmark which follows my lead, as he sent me his first 
draft of the “mathematical universe”, and took my suggestion into account when 
adding computationalism, but he missed the 1P/3p distinction, so my older 
studies remains more consistent. Actually, he cite my papers in the draft, but 
I guess was not able to maintain it for publication. Many told me that there is 
some resistance, not to my ideas, but personal or political (I don’t know as I 
have never met such opponents).
But I have been influenced by Benacerraf and also Judson Webb, etc. (and of 
course Gödel, Hilbert, etc.).

Yet my approach is different. I start from the computationalist hypothesis, and 
everything I say is derived from it, first informally (the universal dovetailer 
argument) and formally (in the more mathematical part).


> Your idea is interesting and intriguing,  related as it is to the philosophy 
> of mathematics. 
> 
It can be related to philosophy of mathematics, but that is a work which 
remains to be done. 

> However, your idea has nothing to do with the concepts of scientific method 
> and of testable hypothesis. 
> 
That is not correct. I prove that if Mechanism is true, the physical reality is 
“in the head of the universal Turing machine”. 
That makes Mechanism testable, by comparing the physics which is in the head of 
the machine with the physics that we infer from observation. When I was young I 
concluded that Mechanism is refuted, but I was naive and ignorant of quantum 
mechanics, which eventually confirmed all the weirdness that I got from 
mechanism, like indeterminacy, non locality, non cloning, the possibility of 
many “parallel” computations/worlds and the possibility to extract a material 
sort of information (confirmed by the notion of quantum information). A lot of 
works remains to be done, but until now, mechanism is confirmed by nature, when 
physicalism + mechanism is refuted by nature. Physicalism + non mechanism is 
still an option, though, but is it really plausible? I don’t know. As a 
scientist, I do not defend any options. I just show mechanism testable and 
confirmed up to now.




> You are talking about philosophy, not about science.  
> 
> 

The complete contrary. I avoid doing philosophy. That is especially important 
when tacking some philosophical questions (at least classify as such by 
Aristotelians) and show them testable experimentally. 


> I feel myself closer to the scientific method than to the logic underlying 
> the philosophy, therefore I prefer to spend my time in reading scientific 
> papers.  
> 

Then study well my papers, because there is no statements which are not 
testable. The whole goal of my work was to show that metaphysics and theology, 
in the frame of some hypothesis, become amenable to the scientific method.I 
literally predicted quantum mechanics from pure arithmetic + mechanism a long 
time ago. Then my thesis shows that all universal machine finds this when 
looking inward (in the sense of Gödel’s self-reference).


> Possibly innovative, always deeply grounded in an experimental context.  
> 
> 

I am with you on this. It is the whole point of my research. Too show that 
thanks to Gödel’s and Turing’s discovery, and some works, we can test today if 
Aristotle Primary Matter hypothesis is confirmed by Nature. But the results is 
that Plato is confirmed, and Aristotle is debunked. We can say that we have 
looked closely at Nature, and that it confirms the immaterialism of Mechanism. 
Nature exists phenomenologically, as we recover its logic and laws from 
arithmetic when we assume computationalism. But assuming some primary matter 
re-introduce the mind-body problem. As there has never been any evidence for 
primary matter found yet, better to not add it.

Bruno




> --
> Inviato da Libero Mail per Android
> 
> domenica, 20 maggio 2018, 07:06PM +02:00 da Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be 
> :
> 
> Hi Dai Griffith, Hi Colleagues,
> 
> 
>> On 17 May 2018, at 13:44, Dai Griffiths > > wrote:
>> 
>> What is a 'thing'? 
>> 
> 
> I assume Digital Mechanism all along. I don’t know if it is true, but if true 
> it provides a clear (and tastable) answer.
> 
> For the staring basic primitive 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-20 Thread tozziarturo

Dear Bruno, 
You talk about "some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also in the 
arithmetical reality)".
This way of reasoning throws us into the realm of the philosophy of 
mathematics, in which you clearly pursue a neo-platonism in the traces of 
Tegmark, Godel, Husserl, Tiles, against Carnap, Hilbert, Stuart Mill, 
Poincare', Brouwer, Lakoff & Nunez, Dehaene, Maddy, Field, Lakatos, Benacerraf. 
 
Your idea is interesting and intriguing,  related as it is to the philosophy of 
mathematics.  However, your idea has nothing to do with the concepts of 
scientific method and of testable hypothesis.  You are talking about 
philosophy, not about science.  
I feel myself closer to the scientific method than to the logic underlying the 
philosophy, therefore I prefer to spend my time in reading scientific papers.   
Possibly innovative, always deeply grounded in an experimental context.  
--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Android domenica, 20 maggio 2018, 07:06PM +02:00 da 
Bruno Marchal  marc...@ulb.ac.be :

>Hi Dai Griffith, Hi Colleagues,
>
>
>>On 17 May 2018, at 13:44, Dai Griffiths < dai.griffith...@gmail.com > wrote:
>>What is a 'thing'? 
>
>I assume Digital Mechanism all along. I don’t know if it is true, but if true 
>it provides a clear (and tastable) answer.
>
>For the staring basic primitive “ontological”, you can stat from any universal 
>complete theory or system.
>To fix the things, I start often from the combinators SK, or, as people are 
>more familiar with them, from numbers, with addition and multiplication. That 
>determines the set of all computations, and our first person experience 
>differentiates on them. Indeed, incompleteness forces the self-referentially 
>correct machines/numbers to get many different modes of selves, the believer, 
>the knower, the observer, the feeler, etc. 
>
>A thing like a chair becomes a sort of map of our (indexical, relative) 
>neighbourhood of consistent continuations.
>
>I am aware it is counter-intuitive, and quite non materialist, but it explains 
>many features of physics, and of consciousness (which is defined as immediate 
>undoubtable unjustifiable truth). It provides a “natural role” for 
>consciousness like a self-seppeding up relatively to the universal numbers.
>
>
>
>
>>Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that  only processes
>>  exist, and that for human convenience in living in the world we
>>  put conceptual membranes around some parts of those processes and
>>  call them 'things'. From this point of view we do not have two
>>  aspects (things and predictions about those things), but simply
>>  the monitoring of processes, and theorising about what we find.
>>  This does not preclude a taxonomy of processes (e.g. mechanisms
>>  might be a special kind of process).
>>Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully
>>  reformulated as "Is information a thing?”.
>
>It is certainly a type of thing. With mechanism, we can exploit the abyssal 
>difference between the arithmetical reality and the arithmetical theory seen 
>from inside by the universal machines. The physics (and theology) is not 
>dependent of the choice of the starting ontology, as any universal entity 
>emulates the infinitely many interactions between all of them (I predicted the 
>non cloning theorem of matter from this well before QM “confirms” it. 
>The interesting thing is not in the things, but indeed in the relations 
>between, and even more in what the universal relations/things can believe, 
>know, observe among all things/relations.
>
>Information can be measured, but it can also interpreted, and that is what the 
>universal machine like to do the most. 
>See my papers for why mechanism associate a notion of person to a vast variety 
>of machines, and also to some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also 
>in the arithmetical reality (not to be confused with its computable part).
>
>Bruno
>
>
>
>
>>Dai
>>
>>
>>On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco
>>  Rivero wrote:
>>>Dear FISers, 
>>>I recently came across an old interview to W. van
>>>Orman Quine and I got an idea -maybe  not very original per se.
>>>Quine distinguishes two kind of philosophical problems:
>>>ontological (those referred to the existence of things) and
>>>predicative (what can we say and know about things). Against
>>>Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological
>>>problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem.
>>>The fact is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All we
>>>have as scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think
>>>of Science as a communicative social system differentiated from
>>>its environment by means of a code -I think Loet would agree
>>>with me in this point). As a system (I mean not the social
>>>system, but the set of statements taken as a unity) they all are
>>>

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-20 Thread Bruno Marchal
Hi Dai Griffith, Hi Colleagues,


> On 17 May 2018, at 13:44, Dai Griffiths  wrote:
> 
> What is a 'thing'? 
> 

I assume Digital Mechanism all along. I don’t know if it is true, but if true 
it provides a clear (and tastable) answer.

For the staring basic primitive “ontological”, you can stat from any universal 
complete theory or system.
To fix the things, I start often from the combinators SK, or, as people are 
more familiar with them, from numbers, with addition and multiplication. That 
determines the set of all computations, and our first person experience 
differentiates on them. Indeed, incompleteness forces the self-referentially 
correct machines/numbers to get many different modes of selves, the believer, 
the knower, the observer, the feeler, etc. 

A thing like a chair becomes a sort of map of our (indexical, relative) 
neighbourhood of consistent continuations.

I am aware it is counter-intuitive, and quite non materialist, but it explains 
many features of physics, and of consciousness (which is defined as immediate 
undoubtable unjustifiable truth). It provides a “natural role” for 
consciousness like a self-seppeding up relatively to the universal numbers.




> Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that  only processes exist, and that 
> for human convenience in living in the world we put conceptual membranes 
> around some parts of those processes and call them 'things'. From this point 
> of view we do not have two aspects (things and predictions about those 
> things), but simply the monitoring of processes, and theorising about what we 
> find. This does not preclude a taxonomy of processes (e.g. mechanisms might 
> be a special kind of process).
> Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully reformulated 
> as "Is information a thing?”.
> 

It is certainly a type of thing. With mechanism, we can exploit the abyssal 
difference between the arithmetical reality and the arithmetical theory seen 
from inside by the universal machines. The physics (and theology) is not 
dependent of the choice of the starting ontology, as any universal entity 
emulates the infinitely many interactions between all of them (I predicted the 
non cloning theorem of matter from this well before QM “confirms” it. 
The interesting thing is not in the things, but indeed in the relations 
between, and even more in what the universal relations/things can believe, 
know, observe among all things/relations.

Information can be measured, but it can also interpreted, and that is what the 
universal machine like to do the most. 
See my papers for why mechanism associate a notion of person to a vast variety 
of machines, and also to some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also 
in the arithmetical reality (not to be confused with its computable part).

Bruno




> Dai
> 
> 
> On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:
>> Dear FISers,
>> 
>> I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I got an 
>> idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two kind of 
>> philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the existence of 
>> things) and predicative (what can we say and know about things). Against 
>> Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological problems are 
>> undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem. The fact is that we cannot 
>> leave the predicative realm. All we have as scientists is scientifical 
>> statements (therefore I think of Science as a communicative social system 
>> differentiated from its environment by means of a code -I think Loet would 
>> agree with me in this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but 
>> the set of statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are 
>> many ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess 
>> I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have many 
>> points of agreement with him but also of disagreement -but honestly I 
>> currently lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough discussion). 
>> Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent ways to deal with it. 
>> But this means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes. 
>> Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the 
>> constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a set of 
>> statements that represent what we know about information. The problem is 
>> that although we can have the intuition that information is real, physical 
>> as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external reference like "reality 
>> ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory function within the system. I 
>> remember that in the "Science of the Society", Luhmann devised the concept 
>> of consistency proofs (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an 
>> sich, is inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be 
>> asking us a question that cannot be answered.
>> 
>> 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-17 Thread Loet Leydesdorff
Perhaps, it is helpful to compare with the question whether the 
centimeter is physical. The meter is calibrated on a physical measure, 
but the centimeter is just a measure. We can provide it with a physical 
referent: "This is a centimeter".


Information is perhaps even more complex: a distribution can be expected 
to contain information. Is an expectation physical? a distribution?


I tend to disagree with Mark by cutting the world into physical / mental 
/ structural, unless the structural includes our codified conventions 
such as what is "a centimeter"? We can entertain the concept mentally, 
but therefore it is not yet mental. It is codified at an 
above-individual level as a structure in language. Is language physical? 
I doubt it: language carriers (human beings) are.


Best,
Loet


Loet Leydesdorff

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

l...@leydesdorff.net <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net>; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of 
Sussex;


Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, 
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
<http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;


Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;

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


-- Original Message --
From: "Jose Javier Blanco Rivero" <javierwe...@gmail.com>
To: "Burgin, Mark" <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
Cc: "Fis," <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: 5/17/2018 12:47:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear FISers,

I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I got 
an idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two kind 
of philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the existence 
of things) and predicative (what can we say and know about things). 
Against Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological 
problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem. The fact 
is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All we have as 
scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think of Science as 
a communicative social system differentiated from its environment by 
means of a code -I think Loet would agree with me in this point). As a 
system (I mean not the social system, but the set of statements taken 
as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are many ways to deal with 
it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess I would need to 
examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have many points of 
agreement with him but also of disagreement -but honestly I currently 
lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough discussion). Self-reference, 
I think, is one of the most coherent ways to deal with it. But this 
means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes.
Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the 
constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a 
set of statements that represent what we know about information. The 
problem is that although we can have the intuition that information is 
real, physical as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external 
reference like "reality ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory 
function within the system. I remember that in the "Science of the 
Society", Luhmann devised the concept of consistency proofs 
(Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an sich, is 
inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be 
asking us a question that cannot be answered.


Best,

JJ

El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark" <mbur...@math.ucla.edu> 
escribió:

   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent 
and creative individuals participated expressing different points of 
view. Many interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this 
discussion, I would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem 
based on our intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.


   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is 
information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that 
here physical means the nature of information and not its substance, 
or more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which can be physical, 
chemical biological or quantum. By the way, expression “quantum 
information” is only the way of expressing that the carrier of 
information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar to 
the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only 
forms or number representations and not numbers themselves.


  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at 
first, to answer the question “Does information exis

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-17 Thread Dai Griffiths

What is a 'thing'?

Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that  only processes exist, and 
that for human convenience in living in the world we put conceptual 
membranes around some parts of those processes and call them 'things'. 
From this point of view we do not have two aspects (things and 
predictions about those things), but simply the monitoring of processes, 
and theorising about what we find. This does not preclude a taxonomy of 
processes (e.g. mechanisms might be a special kind of process).


Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully 
reformulated as "Is information a thing?".


Dai


On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:


Dear FISers,

I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I 
got an idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two 
kind of philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the 
existence of things) and predicative (what can we say and know about 
things). Against Quine materialism I came across the idea that 
ontological problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting 
problem. The fact is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All 
we have as scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think of 
Science as a communicative social system differentiated from its 
environment by means of a code -I think Loet would agree with me in 
this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but the set of 
statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are many 
ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess 
I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have 
many points of agreement with him but also of disagreement -but 
honestly I currently lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough 
discussion). Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent ways 
to deal with it. But this means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes.
Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the 
constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a 
set of statements that represent what we know about information. The 
problem is that although we can have the intuition that information is 
real, physical as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external 
reference like "reality ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory 
function within the system. I remember that in the "Science of the 
Society", Luhmann devised the concept of consistency proofs 
(Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an sich, is 
inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be 
asking us a question that cannot be answered.


Best,

JJ

El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark" > escribió:


   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly
intelligent and creative individuals participated expressing
different points of view. Many interesting ideas were suggested.
As a conclusion to this discussion, I would like to suggest a
logical analysis of the problem based on our intrinsic and often
tacit assumptions.

   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is
information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note
that here physical means the nature of information and not its
substance, or more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which
can be physical, chemical biological or quantum. By the way,
expression “quantum information” is only the way of expressing
that the carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of
nature. This is similar to the expressions “mixed numbers” or
“decimal numbers”, which are only forms or number representations
and not numbers themselves.

  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at
first, to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All
FISers assume that information exists. Otherwise, they would not
participate in our discussions. However, some people think
differently (cf., for example, Furner, J. (2004) Information
studies without information).

   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option,
namely, to admit that information is physical because only
physical things exist.
   If we assume that there are two worlds - information is
physical, we have three options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental

Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which
comprises three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and
the world of structures, we have seven options assuming that
information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-17 Thread Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
Dear FISers,

I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I got an
idea -maybe  not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two kind of
philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the existence of
things) and predicative (what can we say and know about things). Against
Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological problems are
undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem. The fact is that we
cannot leave the predicative realm. All we have as scientists is
scientifical statements (therefore I think of Science as a communicative
social system differentiated from its environment by means of a code -I
think Loet would agree with me in this point). As a system (I mean not the
social system, but the set of statements taken as a unity) they all are
incomplete. There are many ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown
(in this point I confess I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's
ideas. I think I have many points of agreement with him but also of
disagreement -but honestly I currently lack the knowledge to undertake a
thorough discussion). Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent
ways to deal with it. But this means we have to learn to deal with
paradoxes.
Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the
constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a set
of statements that represent what we know about information. The problem is
that although we can have the intuition that information is real, physical
as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external reference like "reality
", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory function within the system. I
remember that in the "Science of the Society", Luhmann devised the concept
of consistency proofs (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an
sich, is inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be
asking us a question that cannot be answered.

Best,

JJ
El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark"  escribió:

>Dear FISers,
>It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and
> creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many
> interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I
> would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our
> intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.
>
>To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is information
> physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical
> means the nature of information and not its substance, or more exactly, the
> substance of its carrier, which can be physical, chemical biological or
> quantum. By the way, expression “quantum information” is only the way of
> expressing that the carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of
> nature. This is similar to the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal
> numbers”, which are only forms or number representations and not numbers
> themselves.
>
>   If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at first,
> to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers assume that
> information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in our
> discussions. However, some people think differently (cf., for example,
> Furner, J. (2004) Information studies without information).
>
>Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, namely,
> to admit that information is physical because only physical things exist.
>If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we
> have three options assuming that information exists:
> - information is physical
> - information is mental
> - information is both physical and mental
>
> Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises
> three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of
> structures, we have seven options assuming that information exists:
> - information is physical
> - information is mental
> - information is structural
> - information is both physical and mental
> - information is both physical and structural
> - information is both structural and mental
> - information is physical, structural and mental
>
>  The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to
> avoid unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information
> (in a general sense) exists in all three worlds but … in the physical
> world, it is called *energy*, in the mental world, it is called *mental
> energy*, and in the world of structures, it is called *information* (in
> the strict sense). This conclusion well correlates with the suggestion of
> Mark Johnson that information is both physical and not physical only the
> general theory of information makes this idea more exact and testable.
>In addition, being in the world of structures, information in the
> strict sense is represented in two other worlds by its representations and
> carriers. 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-17 Thread Søren Brier
Dear Mark

Using 'physical' this way it just tends to mean 'real', but that raises the 
problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel's theorem or mathematics 
and logic in general (the world of form)? Is subjectivity and self-awareness, 
qualia? I do believe you are a conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot 
feel it, see it, measure it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write 
and your behavior. And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we 
touch phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and 
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs in cognition 
and communication). We have problems encompassing these aspects in the natural, 
the quantitative and the technical sciences that makes up the foundation of 
most conceptions of information science.

  Best
  Søren

Fra: Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> På vegne af Krassimir Markov
Sendt: 17. maj 2018 11:33
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
Emne: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,

First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to publish it in 
IJ ITA.
It will be nice to continue our common work this way.

At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on
Is information physical?
was more-less chaotic - we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss and to come 
to some conclusions.

I think now, the Mark's letter may be used as the needed thesis.

What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.


For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.

Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the Infos 
consciousness. I.e. "physical" include "mental".

Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
relationships "between" and/or "in" real (physical) entities as well as 
"between" and/or "in" mental (physical) entities.

I.e. "physical" include "mental" include "structural".

Finally, IF  "information is physical, structural and mental" THEN simply the  
"information is physical"!

Friendly greetings
Krassimir





From: Burgin, Mark<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:20 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and 
creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many 
interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I would 
like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our intrinsic and 
often tacit assumptions.

   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question "Is information 
physical? " depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical means 
the nature of information and not its substance, or more exactly, the substance 
of its carrier, which can be physical, chemical biological or quantum. By the 
way, expression "quantum information" is only the way of expressing that the 
carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar 
to the expressions "mixed numbers" or "decimal numbers", which are only forms 
or number representations and not numbers themselves.

  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at first, to 
answer the question "Does information exist? " All FISers assume that 
information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in our discussions. 
However, some people think differently (cf., for example, Furner, J. (2004) 
Information studies without information).

   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, namely, to 
admit that information is physical because only physical things exist.
   If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we have 
three options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental

Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises three 
worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of structures, we 
have seven options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is both structural and mental
- information is physical, structural and mental

The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to avoid 
unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information (in a 
general sense) exists in all three worlds but ... in the physical world, it is 
called energy, in the mental world, it is called mental

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-17 Thread Krassimir Markov
Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,

First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to publish it in 
IJ ITA.
It will be nice to continue our common work this way.

At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on 
Is information physical?
was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss and to come 
to some conclusions.

I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.

What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.


For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.

Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the Infos 
consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.

Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
relationships “between” and/or “in” real (physical) entities as well as 
“between” and/or “in” mental (physical) entities.

I.e. “physical” include “mental” include “structural”.

Finally, IF  “information is physical, structural and mental” THEN simply the  
“information is physical”!

Friendly greetings
Krassimir





From: Burgin, Mark 
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:20 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es 
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and 
creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many 
interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I would 
like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our intrinsic and 
often tacit assumptions.

   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is information 
physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical means 
the nature of information and not its substance, or more exactly, the substance 
of its carrier, which can be physical, chemical biological or quantum. By the 
way, expression “quantum information” is only the way of expressing that the 
carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar 
to the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only forms 
or number representations and not numbers themselves.
 
  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at first, to 
answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers assume that 
information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in our discussions. 
However, some people think differently (cf., for example, Furner, J. (2004) 
Information studies without information).

   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, namely, to 
admit that information is physical because only physical things exist.
   If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we have 
three options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental  

Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises three 
worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of structures, we 
have seven options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural  
- information is both physical and mental  
- information is both physical and structural  
- information is both structural and mental  
- information is physical, structural and mental  
  
The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to avoid 
unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information (in a 
general sense) exists in all three worlds but … in the physical world, it is 
called energy, in the mental world, it is called mental energy, and in the 
world of structures, it is called information (in the strict sense). This 
conclusion well correlates with the suggestion of Mark Johnson that information 
is both physical and not physical only the general theory of information makes 
this idea more exact and testable.
   In addition, being in the world of structures, information in the strict 
sense is represented in two other worlds by its representations and carriers. 
Note that any representation of information is its carrier but not each carrier 
of information is its representation. For instance, an envelope with a letter 
is a carrier of information in this letter but it is not its representation.
   Besides, it is possible to call all three faces of information by the name 
energy - physical energy, mental energy and structural energy.
   
   Finally, as many interesting ideas were suggested in this discussion, may be 
Krassimir will continue his excellent initiative combining the most interesting 
contributions into a paper with the title
  Is 
information physical?
   and publish it in his esteemed Journal.
   
   Sincerely,
   Mark Burgin


On 5/11/2018 3:20 AM, Karl Javorszky wrote:

  Dear Arturo,  


  There were some reports in clinical psychology

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-17 Thread Bruno Marchal
 

The logicians are the one who discovered the universal machine (computer), 
before it was build. You are using one just now. You seem to ignore Gödel’s 
contribution, which in my opinion is, when we assume mechanism (the older 
metaphysical/theological assumption)  the most important result ever discovered 
by the humans.


> Sorry again! 
> 
> 

You don’t need to be sorry, but my feeling is that you are not aware of the 
result that I got. It is science, which means that it is not a question of 
agreeing or disagreeing, but of understanding or refuting.
Maybe you could study the following papers (if interested):

Marchal B. The computationalist reformulation of the mind-body problem. Prog 
Biophys Mol Biol; 2013 Sep;113(1):127-40

Marchal B. The Universal Numbers. From Biology to Physics, Progress in 
Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 2015, Vol. 119, Issue 3, 368-381.

B. Marchal. The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations. In 4th International 
System Administration and Network Engineering Conference, SANE 2004, Amsterdam, 
2004.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html 
(sane04)

Plotinus PDF paper link:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CiE2007/SIENA.pdf
(Reference: Marchal, B, 2007, B. Marchal. A Purely Arithmetical, yet 
Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus’ Theory of Matter. In Barry 
Cooper S. Löwe B., Kent T. F. and Sorbi A., editors, Computation and Logic in 
the Real World, Third Conference on Computability in Europe June 18-23, pages 
263–273. Universita degli studi di Sienna, Dipartimento di Roberto Magari, 
2007).

The math part requires some background in mathematical logic including 
provability logics, like:

G. Boolos. 1979, The Unprovability of Consistency, an Essay in Modal Logic, 
Cambridge University Press.

G. Boolos. The Logic of Provability. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 
1993.


Best,

Bruno

PS That is my second message. Possible comment next week.


>   
> 
> 
> 
>> -- Messaggio originale -- 
>> Da: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> 
>> A: FIS Webinar <fis@listas.unizar.es> 
>> Data: 14 maggio 2018 alle 11.48 
>> Oggetto: Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical? 
>> 
>> Dear Arturo, Dear Colleagues, 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 11 May 2018, at 18:36, tozziart...@libero.it 
>>> <mailto:tozziart...@libero.it> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear Bruno, 
>>> I'm sorry, but I cannot agree.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> I take a disagreement as a courtesy to pursue a conversation, which would be 
>> boring without them.
>> 
>> But, what I say has been proved, peer reviewed by many, so it is perhaps 
>> more a matter of understanding than of agreeing.
>> 
>> Or you are just telling me that you disbelieve in Mechanism. I prefer to 
>> remain agnostic.
>> 
>> Mechanism is my working hypothesis. The idea is to take it seriously until 
>> we find a contradiction (internal or with the observation). It is a common 
>> by default type of hypothesis, held by many people, notably most 
>> materialist. But here I can prove that (even weak) materialism (the belief 
>> in ontological primary substances/matter) is inconsistent with (even weak) 
>> mechanism. See my papers for this, it is not entirely obvious. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> "eve­ntually I found a co­nceptually isomorphic explanation in 
>>> ari­thmetic."  Isomorphy is a dangerous claim: the underliying mechanisms 
>>> in biology could be something other than isomorphism (i.e., an Ehresmann 
>>> connection in a hyperbolic manifold, as it occurs in gauge theories).
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Nothing in the observation point on either primary matter, nor on non 
>> mechanism. I am not sure why you think that Ehresmann connection or gauge 
>> theories are non mechanist. Actually Mechanism entails that the physical 
>> phenomenology cannot be mechanistic. You might confuse Mechanism in the 
>> cognitive science with digital physics. 
>> 
>> Digital physics (the idea that the physical reality is Turing emulable) does 
>> not make any sense. It entails mechanism, but mechanism entails the falsity 
>> of digital physics (see my paper or ask question: that is not obvious). So, 
>> with or without Mechanism, Digital Physics makes no sense.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Futhermore, you simply change the name of the primum movens, the first 
>>> principium: instead of calling it physics, you call it arithmetic.  This is 
>>> as fideistic as the Carnap's physicalist claims.  
>>> 
>> ?
>> 
>> Physics assumes Arithmetic.
>> 
>> Arithmetic do not assume

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

2018-05-16 Thread Burgin, Mark

   Dear FISers,
   It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent 
and creative individuals participated expressing different points of 
view. Many interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this 
discussion, I would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem 
based on our intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.


   To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is 
information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that 
here physical means the nature of information and not its substance, or 
more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which can be physical, 
chemical biological or quantum. By the way, expression “quantum 
information” is only the way of expressing that the carrier of 
information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar to 
the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only 
forms or number representations and not numbers themselves.


  If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at 
first, to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers 
assume that information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in 
our discussions. However, some people think differently (cf., for 
example, Furner, J. (2004) Information studies without information).


   Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, 
namely, to admit that information is physical because only physical 
things exist.
   If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we 
have three options assuming that information exists:

- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental

Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises 
three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of 
structures, we have seven options assuming that information exists:

- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is both structural and mental
- information is physical, structural and mental

 The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to 
avoid unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information 
(in a general sense) exists in all three worlds but … in the physical 
world, it is called *energy*, in the mental world, it is called *mental 
energy*, and in the world of structures, it is called *information* (in 
the strict sense). This conclusion well correlates with the suggestion 
of Mark Johnson that information is both physical and not physical only 
the general theory of information makes this idea more exact and testable.
   In addition, being in the world of structures, information in the 
strict sense is represented in two other worlds by its representations 
and carriers. Note that any representation of information is its carrier 
but not each carrier of information is its representation. For instance, 
an envelope with a letter is a carrier of information in this letter but 
it is not its representation.
   Besides, it is possible to call all three faces of information by 
the name energy - physical energy, mental energy and structural energy.


   Finally, as many interesting ideas were suggested in this 
discussion, may be Krassimir will continue his excellent initiative 
combining the most interesting contributions into a paper with the title

*Is information physical?*
   and publish it in his esteemed Journal.

   Sincerely,
   Mark Burgin

On 5/11/2018 3:20 AM, Karl Javorszky wrote:

Dear Arturo,


There were some reports in clinical psychology, about 30 years ago, 
that relate to the question whether a machine can pretend to be a 
therapist. That was the time as computers could newly be used in an 
interactive fashion, and the Rogers techniques were a current discovery.
(Rogers developed a dialogue method where one does not address the 
contents of what the patient says, but rather the emotional aspects of 
the message, assumed to be at work in the patient.)


They then said, that in some cases it was indistinguishable, whether a 
human or a machine provides the answer to a patient's elucidations.


Progress since then has surely made possible to create machines that 
are indistinguishable in interaction to humans. Indeed, what is called 
"expert systems ", are widely used in many fields. If the interaction 
is rational,  that is: formally equivalent to a logical discussion 
modi Wittgenstein, the difference in: "who arrived at this answer, 
machinery or a human", becomes irrelevant.


Artistry, intuition, creativity are presently seen as not possible to 
translate into Wittgenstein sentences. Maybe the inner instincts are 
not yet well understood. But!: there are some who are busily 
undermining the current fundamentals of rational thinking. So there is 
hope that we shall live to experience the ultimate disillusionment,  
namely 

[Fis] Fwd: Re: [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-14 Thread tozziarturo
Daer Bruno, 

first of all, sorry for the previous private communication, but for a mistake, 
I did not add the FIS list in the CC. 


Concerning your Faith, i.e., arithmetic, this appraoch... simply does not work 
for the description of physical and biological issues.  It is just in our mind. 
 See: 

http://vixra.org/abs/1804.0132


I'm not confusing digital physics with Mechanism, and I read, of course, the 
work of Everett (the original mathematical one), and it is exactly like 
Mechanism: an untestable, fashinating analogy.  He wants, without any 
possibility of proof, to extend the realm of quantum dynamics to the whole 
macroscopic world. 

When you state that:

> "the reality becomes the universal mind (the mind of the universal Turing 
> machine) and the physical is the border of the universal mind viewed from 
> inside that universal mind".
> 

you are saying something that, reductionistic or not (I do not understand your 
emphasis on this rather trascurable concepts of matter, reduction, and so on), 
needs to be clearly proofed, before becoming the gold standard. 

A suggestion: you cold try to correlate your "physical border of the Universal 
mind viewed from inside that universal mind" with the holographic principle and 
the cosmic horizon.  But in order to do that, you need a strong math, not to 
quote old philosophers that, for a simple matter of luck, were able to 
inconsciously predict some recent developments of the modern science.  I like 
logic, I love logic, I read logic, I study logic, I read a lot of the latin 
texts of the old philosophers that use it (in the Medioeval ones), but I have 
to confess that the scientific value of logic is close to zero.  Both of the 
ancient and of the "novel" logics.

Sorry again! 

  



 Messaggio originale --
Da: Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
A: FIS Webinar <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Data: 14 maggio 2018 alle 11.48
Oggetto: Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

Dear Arturo, Dear Colleagues, 



On 11 May 2018, at 18:36, tozziart...@libero.it mailto:tozziart...@libero.it 
wrote:

Dear Bruno, 
I'm sorry, but I cannot agree.



I take a disagreement as a courtesy to pursue a conversation, which would be 
boring without them.

But, what I say has been proved, peer reviewed by many, so it is perhaps more a 
matter of understanding than of agreeing.

Or you are just telling me that you disbelieve in Mechanism. I prefer to remain 
agnostic.

Mechanism is my working hypothesis. The idea is to take it seriously until we 
find a contradiction (internal or with the observation). It is a common by 
default type of hypothesis, held by many people, notably most materialist. But 
here I can prove that (even weak) materialism (the belief in ontological 
primary substances/matter) is inconsistent with (even weak) mechanism. See my 
papers for this, it is not entirely obvious. 





"eve­ntually I found a co­nceptually isomorphic explanation in ari­thmetic."  
Isomorphy is a dangerous claim: the underliying mechanisms in biology could be 
something other than isomorphism (i.e., an Ehresmann connection in a hyperbolic 
manifold, as it occurs in gauge theories).



Nothing in the observation point on either primary matter, nor on non 
mechanism. I am not sure why you think that Ehresmann connection or gauge 
theories are non mechanist. Actually Mechanism entails that the physical 
phenomenology cannot be mechanistic. You might confuse Mechanism in the 
cognitive science with digital physics. 

Digital physics (the idea that the physical reality is Turing emulable) does 
not make any sense. It entails mechanism, but mechanism entails the falsity of 
digital physics (see my paper or ask question: that is not obvious). So, with 
or without Mechanism, Digital Physics makes no sense.






Futhermore, you simply change the name of the primum movens, the first 
principium: instead of calling it physics, you call it arithmetic.  This is as 
fideistic as the Carnap's physicalist claims.  

?

Physics assumes Arithmetic.

Arithmetic do not assume physics.

I can follow you with the idea that arithmetic still ask for some faith, but 
the amount is less than assuming a primary physical reality.

Then, I have never heard about parents taking back their kids when they are 
taught elementary arithmetic.

Also, with mechanism, we need to assume only a Turing universal machinery. With 
less than that, we get no universal machinery at all. With one of them, we get 
all of them. I simply use arithmetic because everyone are familiar with it. The 
theology and physics of machine do not depend on the choice of the universal 
system assumed at the start. It is an important new invariant of physics. 
Indeed, it determines entirely physics (always assuming Mechanism (aka 
computationalism).






"If you think that a brain is not Turing emul­able, you might be the one to 
whom people can ask"

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-14 Thread Bruno Marchal
Dear Arturo, Dear Colleagues, 


> On 11 May 2018, at 18:36, tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
> 
> Dear Bruno, 
> I'm sorry, but I cannot agree.
> 
> 

I take a disagreement as a courtesy to pursue a conversation, which would be 
boring without them.

But, what I say has been proved, peer reviewed by many, so it is perhaps more a 
matter of understanding than of agreeing.

Or you are just telling me that you disbelieve in Mechanism. I prefer to remain 
agnostic.

Mechanism is my working hypothesis. The idea is to take it seriously until we 
find a contradiction (internal or with the observation). It is a common by 
default type of hypothesis, held by many people, notably most materialist. But 
here I can prove that (even weak) materialism (the belief in ontological 
primary substances/matter) is inconsistent with (even weak) mechanism. See my 
papers for this, it is not entirely obvious. 



> "eve­ntually I found a co­nceptually isomorphic explanation in ari­thmetic."  
> Isomorphy is a dangerous claim: the underliying mechanisms in biology could 
> be something other than isomorphism (i.e., an Ehresmann connection in a 
> hyperbolic manifold, as it occurs in gauge theories).
> 
> 

Nothing in the observation point on either primary matter, nor on non 
mechanism. I am not sure why you think that Ehresmann connection or gauge 
theories are non mechanist. Actually Mechanism entails that the physical 
phenomenology cannot be mechanistic. You might confuse Mechanism in the 
cognitive science with digital physics. 

Digital physics (the idea that the physical reality is Turing emulable) does 
not make any sense. It entails mechanism, but mechanism entails the falsity of 
digital physics (see my paper or ask question: that is not obvious). So, with 
or without Mechanism, Digital Physics makes no sense.




> Futhermore, you simply change the name of the primum movens, the first 
> principium: instead of calling it physics, you call it arithmetic.  This is 
> as fideistic as the Carnap's physicalist claims.  
> 
?

Physics assumes Arithmetic.

Arithmetic do not assume physics.

I can follow you with the idea that arithmetic still ask for some faith, but 
the amount is less than assuming a primary physical reality.

Then, I have never heard about parents taking back their kids when they are 
taught elementary arithmetic.

Also, with mechanism, we need to assume only a Turing universal machinery. With 
less than that, we get no universal machinery at all. With one of them, we get 
all of them. I simply use arithmetic because everyone are familiar with it. The 
theology and physics of machine do not depend on the choice of the universal 
system assumed at the start. It is an important new invariant of physics. 
Indeed, it determines entirely physics (always assuming Mechanism (aka 
computationalism).




> "If you think that a brain is not Turing emul­able, you might be the one to 
> whom people can ask".  The burden of the final proof is yours, because your 
> claim is stronger and less conventional than mine.
> 

Mechanism is a common, implicit or explicit, hypothesis among philosophers and 
scientists. It is a very old theory, already in “the question of Milinda” (a 
buddhist old text), and of course Descartes. Diderot identified it with 
rationalism. That makes sense, because to assume its negation consists in 
adding something for which we do not have any evidence (until now).

Maybe you confuse computable (like automata) and semi-computable (like Turing 
machine). It is the existence of universal machine which is responsible for the 
incompleteness of theories, because there is no complete theory possible for 
anything enough rich to prove the existence of universal machine, like, 
amazingly enough, already very elementary arithmetic.



>   If you say that angels do exist, you have to provide the proof, it's not me 
> that have to provide the proofs that they do not exist.  
> 
> 

But you are the one saying that “angels” exist, with “angels” pointing on 
something not “computable nor semi-computable” in nature or the mind …

Mechanism is just the conjunction of the Church-Turing thesis (CT) + “yes 
doctor” (YD, the idea that we can survive with a brain digital prosthesis). A 
version of Mechanism is that there is no magic at play in our body.

Then it seems that you claim a form of weak materialism, but there too, you are 
the one reifying the notion of primary-matter. That is a strong axiom in 
metaphysics, and there are no evidences for it. It is a natural extrapolation 
from the mundane experience, and we can understand why evolution has select 
such a belief, as we need to take the existence of prey and predator seriously. 
But this, as the Indian and Greeks understood a long time ago, does not provide 
any evidence of primary matter (a notion absent of any book in physics).


> "I will ask your evidence for the wave collapse." This is indeed a strange 
> claim.  There are tons of published papers that 

[Fis] Fwd: Re[2]: [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-11 Thread tozziarturo


 Messaggio inoltrato 
Da:  tozziart...@libero.it A: Bruno Marchal  marc...@ulb.ac.be Cc:  
fis@listas.unizar.es Data: giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 03:23PM +02:00
Oggetto: Re[2]: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

>Dear Bruno, 
>You state: 
>"IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
>THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
>“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
>...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
>description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
>change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
>brain/body at that level of description".
>The problem of your account is the following:
>You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS".
>Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested and 
>it is not empirically testable.  You are starting with a sort of postulate: I, 
>and other people, do not agree with it.  The current neuroscience does not 
>state that our brain/body is (or can be replaced by) a digital machine.
>In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not exist in 
>our real world.  Here your entire building falls down.  
>--
>Inviato da Libero Mail per Android giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 02:46PM +02:00 da 
>Bruno Marchal  marc...@ulb.ac.be :
>
>>(This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it, with 
>>minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first comment 
>>to Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.
>>
>>
>>Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my new 
>>computer classifies them in some mysterious way!
>>This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the end 
>>of the week.
>>
>>
>>>On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark < mbur...@math.ucla.edu > wrote:
>>>Dear Colleagues,
>>>I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>>  Is information physical?
>>
>>That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on. 
>>
>>My result here is that 
>>
>>IF  indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science, 
>>
>>THEN   “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
>>“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
>>
>>The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from 
>>Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model" 
>>(logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").
>>
>>Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
>>description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
>>change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
>>brain/body at that level of description.
>>
>>Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all 
>>physical objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology. Physics 
>>is reduced to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete machinery. 
>>Amazingly Arithmetic (even the tiny semi-computable part of arithmetic) is 
>>Turing complete (Turing Universal).
>>
>>The basic idea is that:
>>
>>1) no universal machine can distinguish if she is executed by an arithmetical 
>>reality or by a physical reality. And,
>>
>>2) all universal machines are executed in arithmetic, and they are 
>>necessarily undetermined on the set of of all its continuations emulated in 
>>arithmetic. 
>>
>>That reduces physics to a statistics on all computations relative to my 
>>actual state, and see from some first person points of view (something I can 
>>describe more precisely in some future post perhaps).
>>
>>Put in that way, the proof is not constructive, as, if we are machine, we 
>>cannot know which machine we are. But Gödel’s incompleteness can be used to 
>>recover this constructively for a simpler machine than us, like Peano 
>>arithmetic. This way of proceeding enforces the distinction between first and 
>>third person views (and six others!).
>>
>>I have derived already many feature of quantum mechanics from this (including 
>>the possibility of quantum computer) a long time ago.  I was about sure this 
>>would refute Mechanism, until I learned about quantum mechanics, which 
>>verifies all the most startling predictions of Indexical Mechanism, unless we 

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-11 Thread Bruno Marchal
Dear Arturo,


> On 10 May 2018, at 15:23, tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
> 
> Dear Bruno, 
> You state: 
> "IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
> THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
> “physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
> ...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
> description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
> change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
> brain/body at that level of description".
> 
> The problem of your account is the following:
> You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS”.
> 
Yes, indeed. It is my working hypothesis. The idea came when asking myself how 
an amoeba can build an amoeba. Then I discovered the solution provided by 
molecular genetics, and eventually I found a conceptually isomorphic 
explanation in arithmetic. Note that by making explicit the use of the level of 
description, my hypothesis is much weaker than most form of computationalism 
you can see in the literature. My reasoning would remain valid even if my body 
is the entire universe, described by quantum string theory with 10^(10^100) 
exact decimals.

> Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested and 
> it is not empirically testable. 
> 
I start from an hypothesis and show, on the contrary that it is testable. I 
predicted well before I knew anything on quantum mechanics that Mechanism 
entails that if we look at nature below our substitution level, we should find 
the trace of infinitely many computations, and only later did I discover that 
quantum mechanics, without the wave collapse, entails something very similar. 
But Mechanism leads also to a complete formalism for both quanta and qualia, 
and here too, the theory/hypothesis match with facts. As it predicts a richer 
formalism, some crucial tests remain to be done. 



> You are starting with a sort of postulate: I, and other people, do not agree 
> with it. 
> 
I prefer to not say my opinion. I am not defending Mechanism. I show it 
testable. My goal consists in showing that we can do metaphysics with the 
scientific method, where we never claim that something is true, just that the 
evidences makes it plausible.

The negation of the digital mechanist theory is usually considered as more 
“extra-ordinary”, as it implies either actual infinities, or some sort of 
magic. If you think that a brain is not Turing emulable, you might be the one 
to whom people can ask: what is your evidence? You might need to refer to 
something non computable in Nature and not recoverable through the first person 
indeterminacy. Note that mechanism entails that physics is NOT emulable by a 
Turing machine, and that consciousness is NOT emulable by a machine), so you 
need special sort of infinities. In fact, non-computationalism can only benefit 
from the study of computationalism, as it shows what is need for a theory to be 
a non-computationalist theory of mind. 



> The current neuroscience does not state that our brain/body is (or can be 
> replaced by) a digital machine.
> 
At which level?

Except for the famous but controversial “reduction of the wave packet” we still 
don’t have find in Nature a non computable process. That might exist, as we can 
“mathematically” find non computable solution to the Schroedinger equation, but 
those are not of the type we observe anywhere.



> In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not exist 
> in our real world.  Here your entire building falls down.  
> 

?

It falls down because you are making the contrary hypothesis, the hypothesis 
that something is not Turing emulable in nature, nor recoverable by the first 
person indeterminacy. That might be possible, but that has not been proved, nor 
even really defined. Your own hypothesis falls down by a similar argument than 
yours, but your own hypothesis is not as well clear as mine, unless you invoke 
the wave collapse? In that case, I will ask your evidence for the wave collapse.

You cannot use the word “real”. That is the same mistake than using the word 
God. What is real is what we search. We cannot start from the answer.

My feeling is that you confuse the universal machine, which is only partially 
computable, and confronted to a lot of non computable truth in arithmetic with 
the pre-Godelian conception of the machine, closer to to the notion now called 
automata. I guess I will have opportunity to make this clear.

I would like to insist (and detailed perhaps later) that Mechanism is the less 
reductionist theory we can imagine. Indeed, a universal machine can refute all 
complete theories about itself. It is a sort of universal dissident. More 
intuitively, it does not qualify as zombie a man or woman who would have 
survived with some brain prosthesis. The moral question will eventually be this 
one: “do you accept that your son or 

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-11 Thread Karl Javorszky
Dear Arturo,


There were some reports in clinical psychology, about 30 years ago, that
relate to the question whether a machine can pretend to be a therapist.
That was the time as computers could newly be used in an interactive
fashion, and the Rogers techniques were a current discovery.
(Rogers developed a dialogue method where one does not address the contents
of what the patient says, but rather the emotional aspects of the message,
assumed to be at work in the patient.)

They then said, that in some cases it was indistinguishable, whether a
human or a machine provides the answer to a patient's elucidations.

Progress since then has surely made possible to create machines that are
indistinguishable in interaction to humans. Indeed, what is called "expert
systems ", are widely used in many fields. If the interaction is rational,
that is: formally equivalent to a logical discussion modi Wittgenstein, the
difference in: "who arrived at this answer, machinery or a human", becomes
irrelevant.

Artistry, intuition, creativity are presently seen as not possible to
translate into Wittgenstein sentences. Maybe the inner instincts are not
yet well understood. But!: there are some who are busily undermining the
current fundamentals of rational thinking. So there is hope that we shall
live to experience the ultimate disillusionment,  namely that humans are a
combinatorial tautology.

Accordingly, may I respectfully express opposing views to what you state:
that machines and humans are of incompatible builds. There are hints that
as far as rational capabilities go, the same principles apply. There is a
rest, you say, which is not of this kind. The counter argument says that
irrational processes do not take place in organisms, therefore what you
refer to belongs to the main process, maybe like waste belongs to the
organism's principle. This view draws a picture of a functional biotope, in
which the waste of one kind of organism is raw material for a different
kind.

Karl

 schrieb am Do., 10. Mai 2018 15:24:

> Dear Bruno,
> You state:
> "IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
> THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e.
> “physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
> ...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of
> description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any
> change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the
> brain/body at that level of description".
>
> The problem of your account is the following:
> You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS".
> Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested
> and it is not empirically testable.  You are starting with a sort of
> postulate: I, and other people, do not agree with it.  The current
> neuroscience does not state that our brain/body is (or can be replaced by)
> a digital machine.
> In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not
> exist in our real world.  Here your entire building falls down.
>
> --
> Inviato da Libero Mail per Android
> giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 02:46PM +02:00 da Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
> :
>
> (This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it,
> with minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first
> comment to Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.
>
>
> Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,
>
>
> Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my new
> computer classifies them in some mysterious way!
> This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the
> end of the week.
>
>
> On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark  wrote:
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>
>   Is information physical?
>
>
> That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on.
>
> My result here is that
>
> *IF* indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
>
> *THEN*  “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e.
> “physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
>
> The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from
> Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model"
> (logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").
>
> Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of
> description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any
> change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the
> brain/body at that level of description.
>
> Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all
> physical objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology.
> Physics is reduced to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete
> machinery. Amazingly Arithmetic (even the tiny 

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-10 Thread tozziarturo

Dear Bruno, 
You state: 
"IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
brain/body at that level of description".
The problem of your account is the following:
You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS".
Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested and 
it is not empirically testable.  You are starting with a sort of postulate: I, 
and other people, do not agree with it.  The current neuroscience does not 
state that our brain/body is (or can be replaced by) a digital machine.
In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not exist in 
our real world.  Here your entire building falls down.  
--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Android giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 02:46PM +02:00 da 
Bruno Marchal  marc...@ulb.ac.be :

>(This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it, with 
>minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first comment to 
>Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.
>
>
>Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,
>
>
>Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my new 
>computer classifies them in some mysterious way!
>This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the end 
>of the week.
>
>
>>On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark < mbur...@math.ucla.edu > wrote:
>>Dear Colleagues,
>>I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>  Is information physical?
>
>That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on. 
>
>My result here is that 
>
>IF  indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science, 
>
>THEN   “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
>“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
>
>The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from 
>Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model" 
>(logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").
>
>Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
>description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
>change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
>brain/body at that level of description.
>
>Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all 
>physical objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology. Physics 
>is reduced to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete machinery. 
>Amazingly Arithmetic (even the tiny semi-computable part of arithmetic) is 
>Turing complete (Turing Universal).
>
>The basic idea is that:
>
>1) no universal machine can distinguish if she is executed by an arithmetical 
>reality or by a physical reality. And,
>
>2) all universal machines are executed in arithmetic, and they are necessarily 
>undetermined on the set of of all its continuations emulated in arithmetic. 
>
>That reduces physics to a statistics on all computations relative to my actual 
>state, and see from some first person points of view (something I can describe 
>more precisely in some future post perhaps).
>
>Put in that way, the proof is not constructive, as, if we are machine, we 
>cannot know which machine we are. But Gödel’s incompleteness can be used to 
>recover this constructively for a simpler machine than us, like Peano 
>arithmetic. This way of proceeding enforces the distinction between first and 
>third person views (and six others!).
>
>I have derived already many feature of quantum mechanics from this (including 
>the possibility of quantum computer) a long time ago.  I was about sure this 
>would refute Mechanism, until I learned about quantum mechanics, which 
>verifies all the most startling predictions of Indexical Mechanism, unless we 
>add the controversial wave collapse reduction principle.
>
>The curious “many-worlds” becomes the obvious (in arithmetic) many 
>computations (up to some equivalence quotient). The weird indeterminacy 
>becomes the simpler amoeba like duplication. The non-cloning of matter becomes 
>obvious: as any piece of matter is the result of the first person 
>indeterminacy (the first person view of the amoeba undergoing a duplication, 
>…) on infinitely many computations. This entails also that neither matter 
>appearance nor consciousness are Turing emulable per se, as the whole 
>arithmetical reality—which is a highly non computable notion as we know since 
>Gödel—plays a key role. Note this makes Digital Physics leaning to 
>inconsistency, as it implies indexical computationalism which implies the 
>negation of Digital Physics (unless my “body” is 

Re: [Fis] [FIS] Is information physical?

2018-05-10 Thread Bruno Marchal
(This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it, with 
minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first comment to 
Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.


Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,


Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my new 
computer classifies them in some mysterious way!
This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the end 
of the week.


> On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark  > wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
> 
>   Is information physical?
> 

That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on. 

My result here is that 

IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science, 

THEN  “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. 
“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.

The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from 
Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model" 
(logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").

Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of 
description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any 
change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the 
brain/body at that level of description.

Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all physical 
objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology. Physics is reduced 
to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete machinery. Amazingly 
Arithmetic (even the tiny semi-computable part of arithmetic) is Turing 
complete (Turing Universal).

The basic idea is that:

1) no universal machine can distinguish if she is executed by an arithmetical 
reality or by a physical reality. And,

2) all universal machines are executed in arithmetic, and they are necessarily 
undetermined on the set of of all its continuations emulated in arithmetic. 

That reduces physics to a statistics on all computations relative to my actual 
state, and see from some first person points of view (something I can describe 
more precisely in some future post perhaps).

Put in that way, the proof is not constructive, as, if we are machine, we 
cannot know which machine we are. But Gödel’s incompleteness can be used to 
recover this constructively for a simpler machine than us, like Peano 
arithmetic. This way of proceeding enforces the distinction between first and 
third person views (and six others!).

I have derived already many feature of quantum mechanics from this (including 
the possibility of quantum computer) a long time ago.  I was about sure this 
would refute Mechanism, until I learned about quantum mechanics, which verifies 
all the most startling predictions of Indexical Mechanism, unless we add the 
controversial wave collapse reduction principle.

The curious “many-worlds” becomes the obvious (in arithmetic) many computations 
(up to some equivalence quotient). The weird indeterminacy becomes the simpler 
amoeba like duplication. The non-cloning of matter becomes obvious: as any 
piece of matter is the result of the first person indeterminacy (the first 
person view of the amoeba undergoing a duplication, …) on infinitely many 
computations. This entails also that neither matter appearance nor 
consciousness are Turing emulable per se, as the whole arithmetical 
reality—which is a highly non computable notion as we know since Gödel—plays a 
key role. Note this makes Digital Physics leaning to inconsistency, as it 
implies indexical computationalism which implies the negation of Digital 
Physics (unless my “body” is the entire physical universe, which I rather 
doubt).

> My opinion is presented below:
> 
> 
> 
>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong belief 
> of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical reality, 
> which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter something 
> that they call information.
>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, 
> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information 
> is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is 
> information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail 
> comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are 
> physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is 
> physical.
>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
> are only carriers or containers of information.
>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-28 Thread Loet Leydesdorff
ime exist without real regular processes which we may 
reflect and compare?


The time is falling drops of water, the movement of the pendulum, 
etc.


One may say, the time is information about all these processes.

OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?


I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations:

- Is information physical?

- Does the information exist without the carrier?


Friendly greetings

Krassimir


From: Burgin, Mark <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
the movement of the pendulum

falling drops of water

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

Dear Colleagues,
I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
  Is information physical?
My opinion is presented below:

   Why some people erroneously think that information is physical

   The main reason to think that information is physical is the 
strong belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is 
only physical reality, which is studied by science. At the same 
time, people encounter something that they call information.
   When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is 
information because with the letter they receive information. The 
letter is physical, i.e., a physical object. As a result, people 
start thinking that information is physical. When people receive an 
e-mail, they comprehend that it is information because with the 
e-mail they receive information. The e-mail comes to the computer 
in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a 
result, people start thinking even more that information is 
physical.
   However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all 
physical objects are only carriers or containers of information.
   To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is 
possible to say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person 
will tell that the textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge 
itself. In the same way, the textbook contains information but is 
not information itself. The same is true for letters, e-mails, 
electromagnetic waves and other physical objects because all of 
them only contain information but are not information. For 
instance, as we know, different letters can contain the same 
information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any 
other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical 
objects (physical things) but they will contain the same 
information.
   Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of 
knowledge, data and similar essences. In spite of this, information 
can act on physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also 
misleads people who think that information is physical.
   One more misleading property of information is that people can 
measure it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible 
to measure only physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to 
the erroneous conclusion that information is physical. However, 
measuring information is essentially different than measuring 
physical quantities, i.e., weight. There are no “scales” that 
measure information. Only human intellect can do this.
   It is possible to find more explanations that information is not 
physical in the general theory of information.

Sincerely,
Mark Burgin


On 4/24/2018 10:46 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:

Dear FIS Colleagues,

A very interesting discussion theme has been proposed by Mark 
Burgin --he will post at his early convenience.
Thanks are due to Alberto for his "dataism" piece. Quite probably 
we will need to revisit that theme, as it is gaining increasing 
momentum in present "information societies", in science as well as 
in everyday life...

Thanks also to Sung for his interesting viewpoint and references.

Best wishes to all,
--Pedro


-
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.eshttp://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-

<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient> 
Libre de virus. www.avast.com 
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient>



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Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-27 Thread joe.bren...@bluewin.ch
Dear Lou and All,
Mark Burgin deserves credit for having started a discussion in which 
contrasting points of view are clearly delineated, and where some new 
convergences can appear. Karl critiques my views as philosophy, but says that 
numbers support them. Arturo critiques Bruno's view of numbers, and I critique, 
in the same spirit, Arturo's unqualified reliance on the physical. "Otherwise 
we are doing philosophy and logic, not science".
But Lou says, "we must not sever philosophy and logic from science", where 
logic is independent of substrate.
I propose inverting this statement: "science must not be severed from 
philosophy and logic", but the logic cannot be what is usually understood by 
that term. The logic must NOT be topic-neutral and does not have to be 
dependent on precise and repeatable methods of measurement. In order to serve 
science, however, any such logic must be grounded in the underlying physical 
structure of the universe, about which we know much more today thanks to 
science. 
So Lou, pace Ludwig, with a logic of real process systems, one can say 
something more about significantly, that is for me dynamically, related pairs 
of opposites, namely, about the patterns of evolution or change.
The energetic and non-energetic aspects of information constitute such a pair 
of significantly related opposites.
Best regards,
Joseph
Message d'origine
De : kauff...@uic.edu
Date : 27/04/2018 - 12:35 (PDT)
À : tozziart...@libero.it
Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist
without the carrier?
Dear Folks,
I suspect I am past quota for the week. Apologies for that.
1. Work in logic and mathematics is scientific even if mathematicians and 
logicians sometimes deny being scientists.
2. Exact work is logical work coupled with precise and repeatable methods of 
measurement.
3. The point about mathematics and logic is that it is independent of the 
substrate on which it is apparently performed. 
This is what I mean by statements such as “all computations exist independently 
of the existence of anything physical”.
You may say, yes, but computations or reasonings cannot occur without some 
substrate!
I almost agree, but point out to you that since you use reasoning, concept and 
observation to conjecture and verify the properties of substrates 
(physical or even conceptual) there is a circularity here.
4. We come to know substrates such as physicality through reason and 
measurement.
We come to know reason and measurement through the support of our physical and 
biological substrates.
We come to investigate both reason and physicality through each other and our 
ability to sense and feel.
Sensing and feeling and measurement are our terms for those places where 
concept and the physical arise together in our perception.
5. Beyond those places where significant related pairs of opposites that cannot 
be separated (complementarities) occur there is our (in at least my tradition)
personal reality of unity — whereof nothing can be said. 
6. We cannot sever philosophy and logic and reason from science, AND for 
science we must open to the largest possible access to precision and 
understanding.
Best,
Lou
On Apr 27, 2018, at 4:38 AM, tozziart...@libero.it wrote:
Dear Bruno, 
You claim: "all computations exists independently of the existence of anything 
physical".
I never heard, apart probably from Berkeley and Tegmark, a more untestable, 
metaphyisical, a-scientific, unquantifiable claim.  
Dear FISers, we NEED to deal with c!  Even if information is (as many FISers 
suggest) at least in part not physical, we NEED to focus just on the testable 
part, i.e., the physical one.  And, even if physics does not exist, as Bruno 
states, at least it gives me something quantifiable and useful for my pragmatic 
purposes.
Even if information is something subjective in my mind (totally untestable, but 
very popular claim) who cares, by a scientific standpoint?
If I say that Julius Caesar was killed by an alien, the theory is fashinating, 
but useless, unless I provide proofs or testable clues.  
--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Androidvenerdì, 27 aprile 2018, 10:10AM +02:00 da 
Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
Hi Lou, Colleagues,
On 25 Apr 2018, at 16:55, Louis H Kauffman <kauff...@uic.edu> wrote:
Dear Krassimir and Mark,
Let us not forget the intermediate question:
How is information independent of the choice of carrier?
This is the fruitful question in my opinion, and it avoids the problem of 
assigning existence to that which is relational.
The same problem exists for numbers and other mathematical entities. Does the 
number 2 exist without any couples?
The mathematical answer is to construct a standard couple (e.g. { { }, {{}} } 
in set theory or two marks || in formalism) and say that 
a collection has cardinality two if it can be placed in 1-1 correspondence with 
the standard couple. In 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-27 Thread Louis H Kauffman
nformation physical?”
>>> 
>>> I agree that “letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
>>> objects are only carriers of information”.
>>> 
>>> The brain is carrier of information, too. 
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Now, I think, what we need to clear is another “simple question” closely 
>>> interrelated to yours:
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Does the information exist without the carrier?
>>> 
>>>  
>>> In other words, can the color, speed, weigh, temperature, time, etc., exist 
>>> without objects which these characteristics belong to and may be measured 
>>> by other objects. 
>>> 
>>> To understand more clearly, let see the case of “time”.
>>> 
>>> Does the time really exist?
>>> 
>>> Does the time exist without real regular processes which we may reflect and 
>>> compare?
>>> 
>>> The time is falling drops of water, the movement of the pendulum, etc.
>>> 
>>> One may say, the time is information about all these processes.
>>> 
>>> OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?
>>> 
>>>  
>>> I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations: 
>>> 
>>> - Is information physical?
>>> 
>>> - Does the information exist without the carrier?
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Friendly greetings
>>> 
>>> Krassimir
>>> 
>>>
>>> From: Burgin, Mark <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
>>> the movement of the pendulum
>>> 
>>> falling drops of water
>>> 
>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
>>> To: fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
>>> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>>>  
>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>>   Is information physical?
>>> My opinion is presented below:
>>> 
>>>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>>>
>>>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong 
>>> belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical 
>>> reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter 
>>> something that they call information.
>>>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
>>> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, 
>>> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that 
>>> information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend 
>>> that it is information because with the e-mail they receive information. 
>>> The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, 
>>> which are physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that 
>>> information is physical.
>>>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
>>> objects are only carriers or containers of information.
>>>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to 
>>> say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the 
>>> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, 
>>> the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same 
>>> is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical 
>>> objects because all of them only contain information but are not 
>>> information. For instance, as we know, different letters can contain the 
>>> same information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any 
>>> other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical objects 
>>> (physical things) but they will contain the same information.
>>>Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, 
>>> data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on 
>>> physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who 
>>> think that information is physical.
>>>One more misleading property of information is that people can measure 
>>> it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only 
>>> physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous 
>>> conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information is 
>>> essentially different than measuring physical quan

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? 'Signs rust.'

2018-04-27 Thread Karl Javorszky
This is a literary level exposition of a view, of the category of
Confessiones. The confidence of a philosopher, like that of a poet, that
his words can be understood, even though they are of a subjective,
individual perspective, is well rewarded if indeed the worldview can be
understood.

Two aspects on which i'd like to comment :

1. If this general allmighty versatile ubiquitous something is such a
wonder thing - what distinguishes then this construct from concepts of
theology? Bruno has been advancing the idea that insofar the problems we
discuss here are of a deep nature, our forefathers will have discussed them
already, in their own respective generations, using the available concepts
of their respective times, and these were of theological lexica. Therefore,
so I understand Bruno to say, we shall not be alienated by the reappearance
of ideas theological. And here we experience a globality of potentials
ascribed to an idea, by the beutiful sonett above by Joseph, which does
come near to ancient beliefs. Welcome the approach, because we try to catch
a metamorphosing beast, which we call information.

2. No day shall pass without mentioning the cycles.  Could we interpret the
"patterns of energy flow" as some kinds of filaments, paths, levels,
densities, probabilities, predictabilities? If we un-anchor our concepts of
"how much determines where", then we have a continuous rearrangement, with
many patterns in it.

The numbers show an unequivocal, solid, rational support for what Joseph
described above as main characteristics of the idea of information.

Karl



joe.bren...@bluewin.ch <joe.bren...@bluewin.ch> schrieb am Do., 26. Apr.
2018 16:33:

> Information refers to changes in patterns of energy flow, some slow
> (frozen), some fast, some quantitative and measurable, some qualitative and
> non-measurable, some meaningful and some meaningless, partly causally
> effective and partly inert, partly present and partly absent, all at the
> same time.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Joseph
>
> >Message d'origine
> >De : u...@umces.edu
> >Date : 25/04/2018 - 08:14 (PDT)
> >À : mbur...@math.ucla.edu
> >Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
> >Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
> >
> >Dear Mark,
> >
> >I share your inclination, albeit from a different perspective.
> >
> >Consider the two statements:
> >
> >1. Information is impossible without a physical carrier.
> >
> >2. Information is impossible without the influence of that which does not
> exist.
> >
> >There is significant truth in both statements.
> >
> >I know that Claude Shannon is not a popular personality on FIS, but I
> >admire how he first approached the subject. He began by quantifying,
> >not information in the intuitive, positivist  sense, but rather the
> >*lack* of information, or "uncertainty", as he put it. Positivist
> >information thereby becomes a double negative -- any decrease in
> >uncertainty.
> >
> >In short, the quantification of information begins by quantifying
> >something that does not exist, but nonetheless is related to that
> >which does. Terry calls this lack the "absential", I call it the
> >"apophatic" and it is a major player in living systems!
> >
> >Karl Popper finished his last book with the exhortation that we need
> >to develop a "calculus of conditional probabilities". Well, that
> >effort was already underway in information theory. Using conditional
> >probabilities allows one to parse Shannon's formula for diversity into
> >two terms -- on being positivist information (average mutual
> >information) and the other apophasis (conditional entropy).
> ><https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>
> >
> >This duality in nature is evident but often unnoticed in the study of
> >networks. Most look at networks and immediately see the constraints
> >between nodes. And so it is. But there is also indeterminacy in almost
> >all real networks, and this often is disregarded. The proportions
> >between constraint and indeterminacy can readily be calculated.
> >
> >What is important in living systems (and I usually think of the more
> >indeterminate ecosystems, rather than organisms [but the point applies
> >there as well]) is that some degree of conditional entropy is
> >absolutely necessary for systems sustainability, as it provides the
> >flexibility required to construct new responses to novel challenges.
> >
> >While system constraint usually abets system performance, systems that
> >become too efficient do so by decreasing their (mutually exclusive)
> >flexibility and become progressively vulnerable t

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? 'Signs rust.'

2018-04-27 Thread Guy A Hoelzer
Joseph,

Thank you for this concise statement.  It very closely matches my own 
perspective.  I would only add the notion that meaningfulness or 
meaninglessness is not an inherent property of information.  It is entirely 
contingent upon the affect, or the absence of affect, of encountered 
information on an agent.

Regards,

Guy



On Apr 26, 2018, at 7:31 AM, 
joe.bren...@bluewin.ch<mailto:joe.bren...@bluewin.ch> wrote:

Information refers to changes in patterns of energy flow, some slow (frozen), 
some fast, some quantitative and measurable, some qualitative and 
non-measurable, some meaningful and some meaningless, partly causally effective 
and partly inert, partly present and partly absent, all at the same time.

Best wishes,

Joseph

Message d'origine
De : u...@umces.edu<mailto:u...@umces.edu>
Date : 25/04/2018 - 08:14 (PDT)
À : mbur...@math.ucla.edu<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

Dear Mark,

I share your inclination, albeit from a different perspective.

Consider the two statements:

1. Information is impossible without a physical carrier.

2. Information is impossible without the influence of that which does not exist.

There is significant truth in both statements.

I know that Claude Shannon is not a popular personality on FIS, but I
admire how he first approached the subject. He began by quantifying,
not information in the intuitive, positivist  sense, but rather the
*lack* of information, or "uncertainty", as he put it. Positivist
information thereby becomes a double negative -- any decrease in
uncertainty.

In short, the quantification of information begins by quantifying
something that does not exist, but nonetheless is related to that
which does. Terry calls this lack the "absential", I call it the
"apophatic" and it is a major player in living systems!

Karl Popper finished his last book with the exhortation that we need
to develop a "calculus of conditional probabilities". Well, that
effort was already underway in information theory. Using conditional
probabilities allows one to parse Shannon's formula for diversity into
two terms -- on being positivist information (average mutual
information) and the other apophasis (conditional entropy).
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.clas.ufl.edu%2Fulan%2Ffiles%2FFISPAP.pdf=01%7C01%7Choelzer%40unr.edu%7C73a6315307d44e5b974e08d5ab828fd4%7C523b4bfc0ebd4c03b2b96f6a17fd31d8%7C1=mgycaijpDrbW59DJZEgtpDF7b6IXcxkNjXaDEyGsllo%3D=0>

This duality in nature is evident but often unnoticed in the study of
networks. Most look at networks and immediately see the constraints
between nodes. And so it is. But there is also indeterminacy in almost
all real networks, and this often is disregarded. The proportions
between constraint and indeterminacy can readily be calculated.

What is important in living systems (and I usually think of the more
indeterminate ecosystems, rather than organisms [but the point applies
there as well]) is that some degree of conditional entropy is
absolutely necessary for systems sustainability, as it provides the
flexibility required to construct new responses to novel challenges.

While system constraint usually abets system performance, systems that
become too efficient do so by decreasing their (mutually exclusive)
flexibility and become progressively vulnerable to collapse.

The lesson for evolutionary theory is clear. Survival is not always a
min/max (fitt*est*) issue. It is about a balance between adaptation
and adaptability. Ecosystems do not attain maximum efficiency. To do
so would doom them.
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.clas.ufl.edu%2Fulan%2Ffiles%2FECOCOMP2.pdf=01%7C01%7Choelzer%40unr.edu%7C73a6315307d44e5b974e08d5ab828fd4%7C523b4bfc0ebd4c03b2b96f6a17fd31d8%7C1=ITG64dm2vbEfvXhNkm2LRLakN45DGjpaET7MvGIbV8s%3D=0>
 The balance also
puts the lie to a major maxim of economics, which is that nothing
should hinder the efficiency of the market. That's a recipe for "boom
and bust". 
<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.clas.ufl.edu%2Fulan%2Ffiles%2FCrisis.pdf=01%7C01%7Choelzer%40unr.edu%7C73a6315307d44e5b974e08d5ab828fd4%7C523b4bfc0ebd4c03b2b96f6a17fd31d8%7C1=oMHc0v136Qq7P2EvFMhqjATtqyB%2B49hz%2BMUBi35Ghxo%3D=0>

Mark, I do disagree with your opinion that information cannot be
measured. The wider application of information theory extends beyond
communication and covers the information inherent in structure, or
what John Collier calls "enformation". Measurement is extremely
important there. Perhaps you are disquieted by the relative nature of
information measurements. Such relativity is inevitable. Information
can only be measured with respect to some (arbitrary) reference
distribution (which is also known in the 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-27 Thread tozziarturo
pt by observation. The machines are distributed in 
>infinitely many exemplars in arithmetic, and that defines a sort of indexical 
>differentiating consciousness flux, leading to (collective) sharable deep 
>dreams which we call the physical.
>
>Now, all this is long to explain, and I’m afraid this can look too much 
>provocative, if I do not add the proofs and much more explanations. People can 
>consult my papers, but needs to study a bit of mathematical logic.
>
>Physicalism/materialism is a long lasting habit of thought, and, as I have 
>experienced my whole life, some materialist defend the dogma with more 
>integrism and violence than some (pseudo)-religious radicals in history. 
>
>Once we assume mechanism, all we need to assume to get both mind and matter is 
>*any* universal machine or machinery, and then the usual platonic 
>epistemological definitions can be used (but they can also be motivated 
>through some thought experience). 
>For the universal machinery, I use (very) elementary arithmetic, because 
>everyone is familiar with them, and can accept that “17 is prime” is true 
>independently of them, which would not be the case with ((K K) K) = K in 
>combinators theory (generally not known). But we can derive arithmetic, and 
>the physical dreams from just very small theories, like
>
>((K x) y) = x
>(((S x) y) z) = ((x z) (y z))
>
>(Axioms of the SK-combinators: that is Turing Universal!)
>
>Or, very elementary arithmetic (Peano arithmetic without induction, + the 
>predecessor axiom), i.e, classical logic +
>
>0 ≠ s(x)
>s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
>x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))    
>x+0 = x
>x+s(y) = s(x+y)
>x*0=0
>x*s(y)=(x*y)+x
>
>That is already a Turing Complete theory.
>
>So information/numbers are independent of the carrier, and the carrier becomes 
>only an appearance from some self-referential modes of the universal number or 
>“machine”. Pythagorus was right, at least provably so in the frame of the 
>Mechanist Hypothesis. Primary Matter is perhaps the last phlogiston of the 
>human mind. With mechanism, weak materialism is false, and physics is not the 
>fundamental science. The physical reality appearance has a 
>*reason*/*explanation* relying on the notion of (Turing) universality.
>
>All the best!
>
>Bruno
>
>
>
>
>>
>>Lou Kauffman
>>P.S. With this letter, I reach my quota for the week and will remain silent 
>>until next Monday.
>>If anyone wants a private email conversation, I shall be happy to carry on in 
>>that fashion.
>>
>>
>>>On Apr 25, 2018, at 2:20 AM, Krassimir Markov < mar...@foibg.com > wrote:
>>>Dear Mark and Colleagues,
>>> 
>>>Very nice “simple question”:  “Is information physical?”
>>>I agree that “letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
>>>objects are only carriers of information”.
>>>The brain is carrier of information, too.  
>>> 
>>>Now, I think, what we need to clear is another “simple question” closely 
>>>interrelated to yours:
>>> 
>>>Does the information exist without the carrier?
>>> 
>>>In other words, can the color, speed, weigh, temperature, time, etc., exist 
>>>without objects which these characteristics belong to and may be measured by 
>>>other objects.  
>>>To understand more clearly, let see the case of “time”.
>>>Does the time really exist?
>>>Does the time exist   w ithout real regular processes which we may reflect 
>>>and compare?
>>>The time is   falling drops of water ,   the movement of the pendulum, etc.
>>>One may say, the time is information about all these processes.
>>>OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?
>>> 
>>>I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations:  
>>>- Is information physical?
>>>- Does the information exist without the carrier?
>>> 
>>>Friendly greetings
>>>Krassimir      
>>>From:   Burgin, Mark
>>>the movement of the pendulum
>>>falling drops of water
>>>Sent:   Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
>>>To:   fis@listas.unizar.es
>>>Subject:   Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>>> 
>>>Dear Colleagues,
>>>I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>>  Is information physical?
>>>My opinion is presented below:
>>>
>>>     Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>>>    
>>>     The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong 
>>>belief of many people, especially, sc

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-27 Thread Bruno Marchal
((K x) y) = x
(((S x) y) z) = ((x z) (y z))

(Axioms of the SK-combinators: that is Turing Universal!)

Or, very elementary arithmetic (Peano arithmetic without induction, + the 
predecessor axiom), i.e, classical logic +

0 ≠ s(x)
s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))
x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)
x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

That is already a Turing Complete theory.

So information/numbers are independent of the carrier, and the carrier becomes 
only an appearance from some self-referential modes of the universal number or 
“machine”. Pythagorus was right, at least provably so in the frame of the 
Mechanist Hypothesis. Primary Matter is perhaps the last phlogiston of the 
human mind. With mechanism, weak materialism is false, and physics is not the 
fundamental science. The physical reality appearance has a 
*reason*/*explanation* relying on the notion of (Turing) universality.

All the best!

Bruno




> 
> Lou Kauffman
> P.S. With this letter, I reach my quota for the week and will remain silent 
> until next Monday.
> If anyone wants a private email conversation, I shall be happy to carry on in 
> that fashion.
> 
> 
>> On Apr 25, 2018, at 2:20 AM, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com 
>> <mailto:mar...@foibg.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Mark and Colleagues,
>> 
>>  
>> Very nice “simple question”:  “Is information physical?”
>> 
>> I agree that “letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
>> objects are only carriers of information”.
>> 
>> The brain is carrier of information, too. 
>> 
>>  
>> Now, I think, what we need to clear is another “simple question” closely 
>> interrelated to yours:
>> 
>>  
>> Does the information exist without the carrier?
>> 
>>  
>> In other words, can the color, speed, weigh, temperature, time, etc., exist 
>> without objects which these characteristics belong to and may be measured by 
>> other objects. 
>> 
>> To understand more clearly, let see the case of “time”.
>> 
>> Does the time really exist?
>> 
>> Does the time exist without real regular processes which we may reflect and 
>> compare?
>> 
>> The time is falling drops of water, the movement of the pendulum, etc.
>> 
>> One may say, the time is information about all these processes.
>> 
>> OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?
>> 
>>  
>> I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations: 
>> 
>> - Is information physical?
>> 
>> - Does the information exist without the carrier?
>> 
>>  
>> Friendly greetings
>> 
>> Krassimir
>> 
>>
>> From: Burgin, Mark <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
>> the movement of the pendulum
>> 
>> falling drops of water
>> 
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
>> To: fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>>  
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>   Is information physical?
>> My opinion is presented below:
>> 
>>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>>
>>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong 
>> belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical 
>> reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter 
>> something that they call information.
>>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
>> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, 
>> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information 
>> is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is 
>> information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail 
>> comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are 
>> physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is 
>> physical.
>>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
>> are only carriers or containers of information.
>>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say 
>> that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the 
>> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, 
>> the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same is 
>> true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects 
>> because all of them only 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? 'Signs rust.'

2018-04-26 Thread Mark Johnson
Dear Joseph,

Thank you for this beautiful summary.

That describes the world doesn't it? (it also describes music - which is a good 
sign). 

I want to say why information matters to me, not to argue about what it is. 

Information matters because it enables these conversations which dissolve 
barriers between disciplines, and ultimately has the capacity to dissolve 
barriers between each of us.

Information is such a powerful concept because everyone thinks they know what 
it is. Really, the conversation is the important thing. We may think we argue, 
but we are all in this dance together. It's always a privilege to have one's 
certainties shattered - who'd have thought the information in email messages 
could be so powerful?!

Best wishes,

Mark

-Original Message-
From: "joe.bren...@bluewin.ch" <joe.bren...@bluewin.ch>
Sent: ‎26/‎04/‎2018 15:33
To: "u...@umces.edu" <u...@umces.edu>
Cc: "fis@listas.unizar.es" <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? 'Signs rust.'

Information refers to changes in patterns of energy flow, some slow (frozen), 
some fast, some quantitative and measurable, some qualitative and 
non-measurable, some meaningful and some meaningless, partly causally effective 
and partly inert, partly present and partly absent, all at the same time.

Best wishes,

Joseph

>Message d'origine
>De : u...@umces.edu
>Date : 25/04/2018 - 08:14 (PDT)
>À : mbur...@math.ucla.edu
>Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
>Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>
>Dear Mark,
>
>I share your inclination, albeit from a different perspective.
>
>Consider the two statements:
>
>1. Information is impossible without a physical carrier.
>
>2. Information is impossible without the influence of that which does not 
>exist.
>
>There is significant truth in both statements.
>
>I know that Claude Shannon is not a popular personality on FIS, but I
>admire how he first approached the subject. He began by quantifying,
>not information in the intuitive, positivist  sense, but rather the
>*lack* of information, or "uncertainty", as he put it. Positivist
>information thereby becomes a double negative -- any decrease in
>uncertainty.
>
>In short, the quantification of information begins by quantifying
>something that does not exist, but nonetheless is related to that
>which does. Terry calls this lack the "absential", I call it the
>"apophatic" and it is a major player in living systems!
>
>Karl Popper finished his last book with the exhortation that we need
>to develop a "calculus of conditional probabilities". Well, that
>effort was already underway in information theory. Using conditional
>probabilities allows one to parse Shannon's formula for diversity into
>two terms -- on being positivist information (average mutual
>information) and the other apophasis (conditional entropy).
><https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>
>
>This duality in nature is evident but often unnoticed in the study of
>networks. Most look at networks and immediately see the constraints
>between nodes. And so it is. But there is also indeterminacy in almost
>all real networks, and this often is disregarded. The proportions
>between constraint and indeterminacy can readily be calculated.
>
>What is important in living systems (and I usually think of the more
>indeterminate ecosystems, rather than organisms [but the point applies
>there as well]) is that some degree of conditional entropy is
>absolutely necessary for systems sustainability, as it provides the
>flexibility required to construct new responses to novel challenges.
>
>While system constraint usually abets system performance, systems that
>become too efficient do so by decreasing their (mutually exclusive)
>flexibility and become progressively vulnerable to collapse.
>
>The lesson for evolutionary theory is clear. Survival is not always a
>min/max (fitt*est*) issue. It is about a balance between adaptation
>and adaptability. Ecosystems do not attain maximum efficiency. To do
>so would doom them.
><https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/ECOCOMP2.pdf> The balance also
>puts the lie to a major maxim of economics, which is that nothing
>should hinder the efficiency of the market. That's a recipe for "boom
>and bust". <https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Crisis.pdf>
>
>Mark, I do disagree with your opinion that information cannot be
>measured. The wider application of information theory extends beyond
>communication and covers the information inherent in structure, or
>what John Collier calls "enformation". Measurement is extremely
>important there. Perhaps you are disquieted by the relative nature of
>information

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? 'Signs rust.'

2018-04-26 Thread joe.bren...@bluewin.ch
Information refers to changes in patterns of energy flow, some slow (frozen), 
some fast, some quantitative and measurable, some qualitative and 
non-measurable, some meaningful and some meaningless, partly causally effective 
and partly inert, partly present and partly absent, all at the same time.

Best wishes,

Joseph

>Message d'origine
>De : u...@umces.edu
>Date : 25/04/2018 - 08:14 (PDT)
>À : mbur...@math.ucla.edu
>Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
>Objet : Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>
>Dear Mark,
>
>I share your inclination, albeit from a different perspective.
>
>Consider the two statements:
>
>1. Information is impossible without a physical carrier.
>
>2. Information is impossible without the influence of that which does not 
>exist.
>
>There is significant truth in both statements.
>
>I know that Claude Shannon is not a popular personality on FIS, but I
>admire how he first approached the subject. He began by quantifying,
>not information in the intuitive, positivist  sense, but rather the
>*lack* of information, or "uncertainty", as he put it. Positivist
>information thereby becomes a double negative -- any decrease in
>uncertainty.
>
>In short, the quantification of information begins by quantifying
>something that does not exist, but nonetheless is related to that
>which does. Terry calls this lack the "absential", I call it the
>"apophatic" and it is a major player in living systems!
>
>Karl Popper finished his last book with the exhortation that we need
>to develop a "calculus of conditional probabilities". Well, that
>effort was already underway in information theory. Using conditional
>probabilities allows one to parse Shannon's formula for diversity into
>two terms -- on being positivist information (average mutual
>information) and the other apophasis (conditional entropy).
><https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf>
>
>This duality in nature is evident but often unnoticed in the study of
>networks. Most look at networks and immediately see the constraints
>between nodes. And so it is. But there is also indeterminacy in almost
>all real networks, and this often is disregarded. The proportions
>between constraint and indeterminacy can readily be calculated.
>
>What is important in living systems (and I usually think of the more
>indeterminate ecosystems, rather than organisms [but the point applies
>there as well]) is that some degree of conditional entropy is
>absolutely necessary for systems sustainability, as it provides the
>flexibility required to construct new responses to novel challenges.
>
>While system constraint usually abets system performance, systems that
>become too efficient do so by decreasing their (mutually exclusive)
>flexibility and become progressively vulnerable to collapse.
>
>The lesson for evolutionary theory is clear. Survival is not always a
>min/max (fitt*est*) issue. It is about a balance between adaptation
>and adaptability. Ecosystems do not attain maximum efficiency. To do
>so would doom them.
><https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/ECOCOMP2.pdf> The balance also
>puts the lie to a major maxim of economics, which is that nothing
>should hinder the efficiency of the market. That's a recipe for "boom
>and bust". <https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Crisis.pdf>
>
>Mark, I do disagree with your opinion that information cannot be
>measured. The wider application of information theory extends beyond
>communication and covers the information inherent in structure, or
>what John Collier calls "enformation". Measurement is extremely
>important there. Perhaps you are disquieted by the relative nature of
>information measurements. Such relativity is inevitable. Information
>can only be measured with respect to some (arbitrary) reference
>distribution (which is also known in the wider realm of thermodynamics
>as "the third law".)
>
>Remember how Bateson pointed to the overwhelmingly positivist nature
>of physics. Classical physics is deficient in its lack of recognition
>of the apophatic. Information theory cures that.
>
>Yes, information requires a material carrier. It also is intimately
>affected by and requires nonmaterial apophasis.
>
>Best wishes,
>Bob
>
>On 4/24/18, Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu> wrote:
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>>
>>Is information physical?
>>
>> My opinion is presented below:
>>
>> Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>>
>> The main reason to think that information is physical is t

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Ulanowicz, Robert
Dear Mark,

I share your inclination, albeit from a different perspective.

Consider the two statements:

1. Information is impossible without a physical carrier.

2. Information is impossible without the influence of that which does not exist.

There is significant truth in both statements.

I know that Claude Shannon is not a popular personality on FIS, but I
admire how he first approached the subject. He began by quantifying,
not information in the intuitive, positivist  sense, but rather the
*lack* of information, or "uncertainty", as he put it. Positivist
information thereby becomes a double negative -- any decrease in
uncertainty.

In short, the quantification of information begins by quantifying
something that does not exist, but nonetheless is related to that
which does. Terry calls this lack the "absential", I call it the
"apophatic" and it is a major player in living systems!

Karl Popper finished his last book with the exhortation that we need
to develop a "calculus of conditional probabilities". Well, that
effort was already underway in information theory. Using conditional
probabilities allows one to parse Shannon's formula for diversity into
two terms -- on being positivist information (average mutual
information) and the other apophasis (conditional entropy).


This duality in nature is evident but often unnoticed in the study of
networks. Most look at networks and immediately see the constraints
between nodes. And so it is. But there is also indeterminacy in almost
all real networks, and this often is disregarded. The proportions
between constraint and indeterminacy can readily be calculated.

What is important in living systems (and I usually think of the more
indeterminate ecosystems, rather than organisms [but the point applies
there as well]) is that some degree of conditional entropy is
absolutely necessary for systems sustainability, as it provides the
flexibility required to construct new responses to novel challenges.

While system constraint usually abets system performance, systems that
become too efficient do so by decreasing their (mutually exclusive)
flexibility and become progressively vulnerable to collapse.

The lesson for evolutionary theory is clear. Survival is not always a
min/max (fitt*est*) issue. It is about a balance between adaptation
and adaptability. Ecosystems do not attain maximum efficiency. To do
so would doom them.
 The balance also
puts the lie to a major maxim of economics, which is that nothing
should hinder the efficiency of the market. That's a recipe for "boom
and bust". 

Mark, I do disagree with your opinion that information cannot be
measured. The wider application of information theory extends beyond
communication and covers the information inherent in structure, or
what John Collier calls "enformation". Measurement is extremely
important there. Perhaps you are disquieted by the relative nature of
information measurements. Such relativity is inevitable. Information
can only be measured with respect to some (arbitrary) reference
distribution (which is also known in the wider realm of thermodynamics
as "the third law".)

Remember how Bateson pointed to the overwhelmingly positivist nature
of physics. Classical physics is deficient in its lack of recognition
of the apophatic. Information theory cures that.

Yes, information requires a material carrier. It also is intimately
affected by and requires nonmaterial apophasis.

Best wishes,
Bob

On 4/24/18, Burgin, Mark  wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>
>Is information physical?
>
> My opinion is presented below:
>
> Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
> The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong
> belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only
> physical reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people
> encounter something that they call information.
>
> When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is
> physical, i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking
> that information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they
> comprehend that it is information because with the e-mail they receive
> information. The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of
> electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result, people start
> thinking even more that information is physical.
>
> However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical
> objects are only carriers or containers of information.
>
> To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to
> say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that
> the 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-25 Thread Louis H Kauffman
Dear Krassimir and Mark,
Let us not forget the intermediate question:
How is information independent of the choice of carrier?
This is the fruitful question in my opinion, and it avoids the problem of 
assigning existence to that which is relational.

The same problem exists for numbers and other mathematical entities. Does the 
number 2 exist without any couples?
The mathematical answer is to construct a standard couple (e.g. { { }, {{}} } 
in set theory or two marks || in formalism) and say that 
a collection has cardinality two if it can be placed in 1-1 correspondence with 
the standard couple. In this way of speaking we do not have to 
assign an existence to two as a noun. The Russelian alternative  — to take two 
to be the collection of all couples — is a fascinating intellectual move, but
I prefer to avoid it by not having to speak of the existence of two in such a 
way. Two is a concept and it is outside of formal systems and outside of the 
physical
except in that we who have that concept are linked with formalism and linked 
with the apparent physical.

And let us not forget the other question.
What is "the physical”?
What we take to be physical arises as a relation between our sensing (and 
generalized sensing) and our ability to form concepts.
To imagine that the “physical” exists independent of that relation is an extra 
assumption that is not necessary for scientific work, however
attractive or repelling it may seem.
Best,
Lou Kauffman
P.S. With this letter, I reach my quota for the week and will remain silent 
until next Monday.
If anyone wants a private email conversation, I shall be happy to carry on in 
that fashion.


> On Apr 25, 2018, at 2:20 AM, Krassimir Markov <mar...@foibg.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Mark and Colleagues,
> 
>  
> Very nice “simple question”:  “Is information physical?”
> 
> I agree that “letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
> objects are only carriers of information”.
> 
> The brain is carrier of information, too. 
> 
>  
> Now, I think, what we need to clear is another “simple question” closely 
> interrelated to yours:
> 
>  
> Does the information exist without the carrier?
> 
>  
> In other words, can the color, speed, weigh, temperature, time, etc., exist 
> without objects which these characteristics belong to and may be measured by 
> other objects. 
> 
> To understand more clearly, let see the case of “time”.
> 
> Does the time really exist?
> 
> Does the time exist without real regular processes which we may reflect and 
> compare?
> 
> The time is falling drops of water, the movement of the pendulum, etc.
> 
> One may say, the time is information about all these processes.
> 
> OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?
> 
>  
> I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations: 
> 
> - Is information physical?
> 
> - Does the information exist without the carrier?
> 
>  
> Friendly greetings
> 
> Krassimir
> 
>
> From: Burgin, Mark <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
> the movement of the pendulum
> 
> falling drops of water
> 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
> To: fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?
>  
> Dear Colleagues,
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>   Is information physical?
> My opinion is presented below:
> 
>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong belief 
> of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical reality, 
> which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter something 
> that they call information.
>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, 
> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information 
> is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is 
> information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail 
> comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are 
> physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is 
> physical.
>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
> are only carriers or containers of information.
>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say 
> that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the 
> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, the 
> textbook contains information but is not information itself. The sa

[Fis] Is Information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Dick Stoute
Mark Burgin has proposed an interesting topic. Here is how I think of it.

We need to know the characteristics of an instrument if we are to correctly
interpret its output.

In this case our perceptual system is the instrument and information is the
output.  The science of perception indicates that our perceptual system is
capable of creating forms that represent our environment, but it is not
capable of direct perception.   According to the neuroscience model, when
we look at a tree we become conscious of the form "tree" created by our
brain that represents the physical (Kant's noumenal) tree.  This makes our
conscious world a world of forms and we in-form ourselves when we look at
(perceive) our environment.

Forms include some aspects of what they represent (often the shape) - but
exclude other aspects. We can therefore think of forms as
abstractions.  Because we only become conscious of  forms, we get the
impression that these forms are non-physical and likewise we surmise that
information is also non physical.  However, as we can assume that the forms
we become conscious of have a material substrate that is not represented in
what appears in consciousness, we can model this as if there is a physical
component to a form that is not apparent in the conscious form.  Just as we
can use pebbles to create a form on a beach and then ignore the pebbles,
our can brain uses some material component (possibly a field) to create the
form we become conscious of. without us becoming conscious of the substrate.

To test this model we can see how well it deals with the famous mind/body
interaction problem. We can think of a living active brain as being made up
of the "meat" and the electrochemical  activity and the fields these
generate etc.  If we abstract away the activity, we are left with the meat,
but if we abstract away the meat we are left with the activity.  We can
call one brain and the other mind, and treat them as if they were different
abstractions of the same entity. If we do this the interaction problem
disappears and we are no longer tempted to accept that this duality is
something that exists outside of consciousness.  We create the mind/brain
model because it  is useful for analysis, but it is not a good
representation of the living brain, which is an integral unit.

Similarly we create an information/matter duality that is useful for many
purposes, but we must recognise that each component of this duality is an
abstraction of an integrated substrate. On this approach, we confuse
ourselves when we create a duality and then impose it on what it represents.

Sincerely,

Dick Stoute







-- 

4 Austin Dr. Prior Park St. James, Barbados BB23004
Tel:   246-421-8855
Cell:  246-243-5938
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Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Karl Javorszky
The question „Is information physical?” relates to the equivalence between
two mental/emotional contents of the brain, and can be compared to “Is A =
B ?” at first sight. In the form the question is posed, it is rendered in a
more empathic fashion in the form “Does A contain a sufficiently large
proportion of properties of B so that one may reasonably say that A is
either a subset of B or is identical with B or does A include B ?”.

That, what “physical” refers to, may be understood to be beyond individual
interpretations. Logical sentences can be constructed about observations of
the world, and agreements can be achieved about what these sentences
denote. Society has created a cultural construct, like the value π, what
the term “physical” means. The concept is detached from the varieties of
individual connotations and emotional associative links, memory embeddings
and personal involvements while having learnt to de-personalise the concept
from its individual connections within the person’s brain.

The “information” part of the equivalence to be investigated can be varied
along the connotations of “information”. One generates sentences like “Is
the background physical?”, “Is the otherwise physical?”, “Is one specific
of the remaining alternatives physical?”, “Is the increase in my knowledge
physical?”, “Is the surprise I experience physical?”, “Is the contrast
physical?”

Maybe a first step towards a satisfying answer to the question of the
equivalence of information with effects, phenomena, ideas that are within
the domain of Physics, would be to arrive at a cultural understanding of
what the term means.

Presently, in normal conversational context, “information” is equivalent to
“is news for me”. If one receives a message that contains data that are
already known, the information content of that message is Zero. This moment
links the content’s information value to the learning history of
individuals. (If one has never learnt that a cold, low quality, drinking
glass will splitter if poured hot water into, this experience will inform
him on the subject.) The individual variety of the extent/amount/diversity
of information makes that term – as used in colloquial speech – not suited
for usage in a logical discourse.

If we speak in logical style, then the information domain refers to the
collection of alternatives to that what is the case, and the content of the
information is a selection criterion for some of the alternatives. Whether
the background as such or specific elements from among the elements of the
background are physical or not, is a matter for gourmets to chew on. If *v=d/t
*is physical, so be it.


2018-04-25 14:39 GMT+02:00 Jose Javier Blanco Rivero 
:

> Dear all,
>
> Following the ideas of Mark, Lou,   Krassimir and Arturo, I think it is
> worth to insist on a proposal I made in this forum a few months ago. That
> is, the thesis of a general theory of communication media.
> (Before going on I would like to remark that the concepts used here do not
> designate essences but functions, they are thought as answers to
> how-questions and not to what-questions)
> Instead of talking about carriers or substrates of information, we should
> be talking about communication media. Because, as Krassimir remarked,
> information can only become information in the context of a medium
> -material or not.
> As a medium can operate any redundant pattern and/or self organized
> process. Being information the result of or distinctions traced by this
> self driven process in an effort to  fix its own structures according to
> the constraints set by its environment and by its own actual possibilities
> of actualizing determined states of itself. Talking about communication
> would make sense as long as there are information processing, therefore
> redundance, and selection of information. It also makes sense as long as
> way to describe the evolution of the behavior of systems that interact
> somehow becoming interdependent to some degree.  As Arturo points out,
> anthropocentrism -and I would add: a persistent philosophy of
> consciousness- is rather an obstacle. Any selfrerential  and selforganized
> system can draw distinctions, process information and communicate. But we
> should take care to distinguish the very medium that make that system
> possible (which can be the domain of the physical, that is, the domain of
> existence of the observable and mensurable) and the media that function
> more or less regularly to the purpose of communication.
> I remember I also criticized the idea of information transmission.
> Information  is not transmitted. Regular patterns are instrumentalized to
> codify a symbolic system. When this occurs a technical medium of
> communication has been developed.
> I know there would be many flaws other general setting of this proposal,
> but I also think it is a thought worth to be followed  and perfectioned.
> This would not lead astray of information 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
Dear all,

Following the ideas of Mark, Lou,   Krassimir and Arturo, I think it is
worth to insist on a proposal I made in this forum a few months ago. That
is, the thesis of a general theory of communication media.
(Before going on I would like to remark that the concepts used here do not
designate essences but functions, they are thought as answers to
how-questions and not to what-questions)
Instead of talking about carriers or substrates of information, we should
be talking about communication media. Because, as Krassimir remarked,
information can only become information in the context of a medium
-material or not.
As a medium can operate any redundant pattern and/or self organized
process. Being information the result of or distinctions traced by this
self driven process in an effort to  fix its own structures according to
the constraints set by its environment and by its own actual possibilities
of actualizing determined states of itself. Talking about communication
would make sense as long as there are information processing, therefore
redundance, and selection of information. It also makes sense as long as
way to describe the evolution of the behavior of systems that interact
somehow becoming interdependent to some degree.  As Arturo points out,
anthropocentrism -and I would add: a persistent philosophy of
consciousness- is rather an obstacle. Any selfrerential  and selforganized
system can draw distinctions, process information and communicate. But we
should take care to distinguish the very medium that make that system
possible (which can be the domain of the physical, that is, the domain of
existence of the observable and mensurable) and the media that function
more or less regularly to the purpose of communication.
I remember I also criticized the idea of information transmission.
Information  is not transmitted. Regular patterns are instrumentalized to
codify a symbolic system. When this occurs a technical medium of
communication has been developed.
I know there would be many flaws other general setting of this proposal,
but I also think it is a thought worth to be followed  and perfectioned.
This would not lead astray of information science. On the contrary, it lays
inside its very spirit. Elemental units such as information are related to
wider contexts such as communication. It is up to theory to put together
that unity.

Best,
El abr 24, 2018 10:49 PM, "Burgin, Mark"  escribió:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>
>   Is information physical?
>
> My opinion is presented below:
>
>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
>
>
>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong
> belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical
> reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter
> something that they call information.
>
>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical,
> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that
> information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend
> that it is information because with the e-mail they receive information.
> The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves,
> which are physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that
> information is physical.
>
>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical
> objects are only carriers or containers of information.
>
>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to
> say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the
> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way,
> the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same
> is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical
> objects because all of them only contain information but are not
> information. For instance, as we know, different letters can contain the
> same information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any
> other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical objects
> (physical things) but they will contain the same information.
>
>Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge,
> data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on
> physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who
> think that information is physical.
>
>One more misleading property of information is that people can measure
> it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only
> physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous
> conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information is
> essentially different than measuring physical 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Dai Griffiths

Thanks everyone, all very stimulating!

On 25/04/18 03:47, Burgin, Mark wrote:
Any reasonable person will tell that the textbook contains knowledge 
This is a metaphor. It is helpful in managing the complex relationships 
of humans with media, but will lead us into tangles if we believe that 
it is anything more.



Mark Johnson, thinking about music followed up with a pertinent question

What is the relation of the score to what occurs?


I'd say that both the book and the score are most usefully seen not as 
the transfer of information, but as coordination in relation to an artifact.



Arturo warned against anthropomorphism, and said
I start to sweat. ... my body (without the need of my mind!) extracts 
a termic information from its surrounding environment 
As Lou says, "Information in the sense that you indicate is pattern that 
is independent of the particular substrate on which it is ‘carried’."  I 
sweat because of the interaction between my body and its environment, 
through of a cascade of cellular interactions, mediated by chemical 
processes. We can describe these chemical processes as patterns, and 
from those descriptions learn something about physiology. But that does 
not mean that the processes themselves are composed of pattern or of 
information.


To my mind 'extraction' of information is a metaphor (and from Lakoff's 
perspective it is therefore anthropomorphic). Does the body send out 
emissaries to mine the information? Of course Arturo does not believe 
that, and I'm not trying to score cheap points here. I just want to 
point out that language is not a neutral tool when we are discussing 
information. Lou's "in the sense that you indicate" correctly alerts us 
to the fact that there is more than one meaning to the word 
'information', and implies a warning that we will talk past each other 
unless we are willing to clarify the distinctions we are making when we 
use the word. There is a long and valuable intellectual tradition that 
uses the word information in terms of entropy, but that is not the only 
way that the word is used.


Best
Dai

--
-

Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Education
School of Education and Psychology
The University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton, BL3 5AB

Office: M106

SKYPE: daigriffiths

Phones (please don't leave voice mail)
   UK Mobile +44 (0)7491151559
   Spanish Mobile: + 34 687955912
   Work landline: + 44 (0)1204903598

email
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   dai.griffith...@gmail.com

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Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Gyorgy Darvas

Hi all,

Information is information.
There is no reason to bundle it under any other genus.

There are physical information! (Cf., my paper at the Vienna conference, 
2015.)

... And there are other (non-physical) information.

Other approach:
Information follows, in certain aspects, some laws of physics, and it 
avoids to do so in other instances.
Even following a law of physics doesn't allow to identify the object (in 
our case: information) with physics.


Similar to a well discussed other example: information can be 
characterised by similar mathematics to that of entropy, while this 
similitude does not mean that information as such is entropy.


Good luck,
Gyuri


On 2018.04.25. 6:52, Louis H Kauffman wrote:

Dear Mark,
Thank you for suggesting this topic.
I concur wholeheartedly with your stand on this matter.
Information in the sense that you indicate
is pattern that is independent of the particular substrate on which it 
is ‘carried’.


There is a persistent myth in popular scientific culture that 
mathematics and the physical are identical.

Just as information is not physical, neither is mathematics.
Each mathematical structure is recognizable as mathematics in that it 
is strictly relational and quite independent of the medium in which it 
is expressed.


The example of mathematics as information independent of substrate
is an opening for exploring more deeply the nature of information. For 
we are all aware
of the remarkable interplay of mathematics and the quantitative and 
structural understanding of the physical.


I suspect that the end result of that exploration will be for us to 
admit that

we do not know know what is physical,
that we can deny that information is not physical.

The crux of the matter (sic)
lies in the distinction made between the physical and the non-physical.
There is such a distinction.
The boundary of that distinction is unknown territory.
Very best,
Lou Kauffman


On Apr 24, 2018, at 8:47 PM, Burgin, Mark > wrote:


Dear Colleagues,

I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion

Is information physical?

My opinion is presented below:



Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong 
belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only 
physical reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, 
people encounter something that they call information.
When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
because with the letter they receive information. The letter is 
physical, i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking 
that information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they 
comprehend that it is information because with the e-mail they 
receive information. The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of 
electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result, people start 
thinking even more that information is physical.
However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
objects are only carriers or containers of information.
To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to 
say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that 
the textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the 
same way, the textbook contains information but is not information 
itself. The same is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves 
and other physical objects because all of them only contain 
information but are not information. For instance, as we know, 
different letters can contain the same information. Even if we make 
an identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the letter and 
its copy will be different physical objects (physical things) but 
they will contain the same information.
Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, 
data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on 
physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads 
people who think that information is physical.
One more misleading property of information is that people can 
measure it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible 
to measure only physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to 
the erroneous conclusion that information is physical. However, 
measuring information is essentially different than measuring 
physical quantities, i.e., weight. There are no “scales” that measure 
information. Only human intellect can do this.
It is possible to find more explanations that information is not 
physical in the general theory of information.


Sincerely,
Mark Burgin


On 4/24/2018 10:46 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:

Dear FIS Colleagues,

A very interesting discussion theme has been proposed by Mark Burgin 
--he will post at his early convenience.
Thanks are due to Alberto for his "dataism" piece. Quite probably we 
will need to revisit that theme, as it 

[Fis] Is information physical? OR Does the information exist without the carrier?

2018-04-25 Thread Krassimir Markov
Dear Mark and Colleagues,



Very nice “simple question”:  “Is information physical?”

I agree that “letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
are only carriers of information”.

The brain is carrier of information, too. 



Now, I think, what we need to clear is another “simple question” closely 
interrelated to yours:



Does the information exist without the carrier?



In other words, can the color, speed, weigh, temperature, time, etc., exist 
without objects which these characteristics belong to and may be measured by 
other objects. 

To understand more clearly, let see the case of “time”.

Does the time really exist?

Does the time exist without real regular processes which we may reflect and 
compare?

The time is falling drops of water, the movement of the pendulum, etc.

One may say, the time is information about all these processes.

OK! But, if these processes do not exist, will we have “time”?



I think, we have a question in two interrelated explanations: 

- Is information physical?

- Does the information exist without the carrier?



Friendly greetings

Krassimir

From: Burgin, Mark 
the movement of the pendulum

falling drops of water

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 4:47 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es 
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion

  Is information physical?


My opinion is presented below:



   Why some people erroneously think that information is physical

   

   The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong belief 
of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical reality, 
which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter something that 
they call information.

   When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information because 
with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, i.e., a 
physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information is 
physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is information 
because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail comes to the 
computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result, 
people start thinking even more that information is physical.

   However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
are only carriers or containers of information.

   To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say 
that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the textbook 
contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, the textbook 
contains information but is not information itself. The same is true for 
letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects because all 
of them only contain information but are not information. For instance, as we 
know, different letters can contain the same information. Even if we make an 
identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the letter and its copy will 
be different physical objects (physical things) but they will contain the same 
information.

   Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, data 
and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on physical objects 
(physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who think that 
information is physical.

   One more misleading property of information is that people can measure it. 
This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only 
physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous conclusion 
that information is physical. However, measuring information is essentially 
different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., weight. There are no 
“scales” that measure information. Only human intellect can do this.

   It is possible to find more explanations that information is not physical in 
the general theory of information. 

Sincerely,
Mark Burgin



On 4/24/2018 10:46 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:

  Dear FIS Colleagues,

  A very interesting discussion theme has been proposed by Mark Burgin --he 
will post at his early convenience. 
  Thanks are due to Alberto for his "dataism" piece. Quite probably we will 
need to revisit that theme, as it is gaining increasing momentum in present 
"information societies", in science as well as in everyday life...
  Thanks also to Sung for his interesting viewpoint and references.

  Best wishes to all,
  --Pedro 


 
-
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
- 
   Libre de virus. www.avast.com  


   

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Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Mark Johnson
Dear Lou and Mark,

Thanks for this - it is very important.

A quick question: why does it have to one or the other? Does the law of the
excluded middle apply to information? Why can't it be both?

As a way of extending this, can I suggest that the boundary between the
physical and the non-physical is between constraint A and constraint B?
It's likely that my boundary between A and B is not the same as your
boundary. My transduction process which maintains my boundary is not the
same as your transduction process. But it may well be that our transduction
processes are intertwined - like when we talk about it and try to agree
what "information" is.

As for knowledge in a textbook, the function of objects in the process of
teaching (what's that?) is certainly not as simple as the mere appearance
of textbooks would suggest: a textbook isn't a "knowledge pill". There are
related questions: what does a conductor do to an orchestra? What is the
relation of the score to what occurs? Where is the performance?

Best wishes,

Mark





On 25 April 2018 at 05:52, Louis H Kauffman  wrote:

> Dear Mark,
> Thank you for suggesting this topic.
> I concur wholeheartedly with your stand on this matter.
> Information in the sense that you indicate
> is pattern that is independent of the particular substrate on which it is
> ‘carried’.
>
> There is a persistent myth in popular scientific culture that mathematics
> and the physical are identical.
> Just as information is not physical, neither is mathematics.
> Each mathematical structure is recognizable as mathematics in that it is
> strictly relational and quite independent of the medium in which it is
> expressed.
>
> The example of mathematics as information independent of substrate
> is an opening for exploring more deeply the nature of information. For we
> are all aware
> of the remarkable interplay of mathematics and the quantitative and
> structural understanding of the physical.
>
> I suspect that the end result of that exploration will be for us to admit
> that
> we do not know know what is physical,
> that we can deny that information is not physical.
>
> The crux of the matter (sic)
> lies in the distinction made between the physical and the non-physical.
> There is such a distinction.
> The boundary of that distinction is unknown territory.
> Very best,
> Lou Kauffman
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2018, at 8:47 PM, Burgin, Mark  wrote:
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
>
>   Is information physical?
>
> My opinion is presented below:
>
>
>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong
> belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical
> reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter
> something that they call information.
>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical,
> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that
> information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend
> that it is information because with the e-mail they receive information.
> The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves,
> which are physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that
> information is physical.
>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical
> objects are only carriers or containers of information.
>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to
> say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the
> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way,
> the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same
> is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical
> objects because all of them only contain information but are not
> information. For instance, as we know, different letters can contain the
> same information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any
> other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical objects
> (physical things) but they will contain the same information.
>Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge,
> data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on
> physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who
> think that information is physical.
>One more misleading property of information is that people can measure
> it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only
> physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous
> conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information is
> essentially different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-25 Thread Xueshan Yan
Dear Mark,

 

Thank you for expressing your opinion of "Information Is Not Physical" in
concise language. It represents the general view from information science
researchers.

As far as I know, the view of "Information Is Physical?" only appeared in
(natural) science especially in physics. It was first put forward by IBM
physicist Rolf Londouer in 1991. In John Wheeler's writings, though he did
not say so clearly, my feeling is that he generally holds this view.

Thank Louis for using the concept of ‘substrate’ in his post, it is indeed
more academic than ‘carrier’ or ‘container’.

 

Best wishes,

Xueshan

 

P.S.:

1. Rolf Londouer, Information is Physical, in PHYSICS TODAY, May 1991, pp.
23~29.

2. Rolf Londouer, Information is Physical, in Physics and Computation, 1992.
PhysComp '92, pp. 1~4.

3. Rolf Londouer, Information is Physical, in IEEE Computer Society Pr.,
1993. pp. 333~337.

 

From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> On Behalf
Of Louis H Kauffman
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 12:52 PM
To: Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

 

Dear Mark,

Thank you for suggesting this topic.

I concur wholeheartedly with your stand on this matter.

Information in the sense that you indicate 

is pattern that is independent of the particular substrate on which it is
‘carried’.

 

There is a persistent myth in popular scientific culture that mathematics
and the physical are identical.

Just as information is not physical, neither is mathematics.

Each mathematical structure is recognizable as mathematics in that it is
strictly relational and quite independent of the medium in which it is
expressed.

 

The example of mathematics as information independent of substrate 

is an opening for exploring more deeply the nature of information. For we
are all aware

of the remarkable interplay of mathematics and the quantitative and
structural understanding of the physical.

 

I suspect that the end result of that exploration will be for us to admit
that 

we do not know know what is physical, 

that we can deny that information is not physical.

 

The crux of the matter (sic)

lies in the distinction made between the physical and the non-physical.

There is such a distinction. 

The boundary of that distinction is unknown territory.

Very best,

Lou Kauffman

 

 

On Apr 24, 2018, at 8:47 PM, Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu
<mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu> > wrote:

 

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion

  Is information physical?

My opinion is presented below:

 

 

   Why some people erroneously think that information is physical

   

   The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong
belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical
reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter
something that they call information.

   When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information
because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, i.
e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information
is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is
information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail
comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are
physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is
physical.

   However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects
are only carriers or containers of information.

   To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say
that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the
textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way,
the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same is
true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects
because all of them only contain information but are not information. For
instance, as we know, different letters can contain the same information.
Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the
letter and its copy will be different physical objects (physical things) but
they will contain the same information.

   Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge,
data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on physical
objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who think
that information is physical.

   One more misleading property of information is that people can measure
it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only
physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous conclusion
that information is physical. However, measuring information is essentially
different than

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-24 Thread Louis H Kauffman
Dear Mark,
Thank you for suggesting this topic.
I concur wholeheartedly with your stand on this matter.
Information in the sense that you indicate 
is pattern that is independent of the particular substrate on which it is 
‘carried’.

There is a persistent myth in popular scientific culture that mathematics and 
the physical are identical.
Just as information is not physical, neither is mathematics.
Each mathematical structure is recognizable as mathematics in that it is 
strictly relational and quite independent of the medium in which it is 
expressed.

The example of mathematics as information independent of substrate 
is an opening for exploring more deeply the nature of information. For we are 
all aware
of the remarkable interplay of mathematics and the quantitative and structural 
understanding of the physical.

I suspect that the end result of that exploration will be for us to admit that 
we do not know know what is physical, 
that we can deny that information is not physical.

The crux of the matter (sic)
lies in the distinction made between the physical and the non-physical.
There is such a distinction. 
The boundary of that distinction is unknown territory.
Very best,
Lou Kauffman


> On Apr 24, 2018, at 8:47 PM, Burgin, Mark  wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
> 
>   Is information physical?
> 
> My opinion is presented below:
> 
> 
> 
>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
>
>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong belief 
> of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical reality, 
> which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter something 
> that they call information.
>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
> because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, 
> i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information 
> is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is 
> information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail 
> comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are 
> physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is 
> physical.
>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects 
> are only carriers or containers of information.
>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say 
> that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the 
> textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, the 
> textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same is true 
> for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects 
> because all of them only contain information but are not information. For 
> instance, as we know, different letters can contain the same information. 
> Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the 
> letter and its copy will be different physical objects (physical things) but 
> they will contain the same information.
>Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, data 
> and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on physical 
> objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who think that 
> information is physical.
>One more misleading property of information is that people can measure it. 
> This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only 
> physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous conclusion 
> that information is physical. However, measuring information is essentially 
> different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., weight. There are no 
> “scales” that measure information. Only human intellect can do this.
>It is possible to find more explanations that information is not physical 
> in the general theory of information. 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Mark Burgin
> 
> 
> On 4/24/2018 10:46 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
>> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>> 
>> A very interesting discussion theme has been proposed by Mark Burgin --he 
>> will post at his early convenience. 
>> Thanks are due to Alberto for his "dataism" piece. Quite probably we will 
>> need to revisit that theme, as it is gaining increasing momentum in present 
>> "information societies", in science as well as in everyday life...
>> Thanks also to Sung for his interesting viewpoint and references.
>> 
>> Best wishes to all,
>> --Pedro 
>> 
>>  
>> -
>> Pedro C. Marijuán
>> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>> pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es 
>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ 
>> 
>> 

Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

2018-04-24 Thread Burgin, Mark

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion

  Is information physical?

My opinion is presented below:

Why some people erroneously think that information is physical

The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong 
belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only 
physical reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people 
encounter something that they call information.


When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information 
because with the letter they receive information. The letter is 
physical, i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking 
that information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they 
comprehend that it is information because with the e-mail they receive 
information. The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of 
electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result, people start 
thinking even more that information is physical.


However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical 
objects are only carriers or containers of information.


To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to 
say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that 
the textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same 
way, the textbook contains information but is not information itself. 
The same is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other 
physical objects because all of them only contain information but are 
not information. For instance, as we know, different letters can contain 
the same information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or 
any other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical 
objects (physical things) but they will contain the same information.


Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, 
data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on 
physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people 
who think that information is physical.


One more misleading property of information is that people can measure 
it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure 
only physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous 
conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information 
is essentially different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., 
weight. There are no “scales” that measure information. Only human 
intellect can do this.


It is possible to find more explanations that information is not 
physical in the general theory of information.


Sincerely,
Mark Burgin


On 4/24/2018 10:46 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:

Dear FIS Colleagues,

A very interesting discussion theme has been proposed by Mark Burgin 
--he will post at his early convenience.
Thanks are due to Alberto for his "dataism" piece. Quite probably we 
will need to revisit that theme, as it is gaining increasing momentum 
in present "information societies", in science as well as in everyday 
life...

Thanks also to Sung for his interesting viewpoint and references.

Best wishes to all,
--Pedro

  
-

Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-

 
	Libre de virus. www.avast.com 
 



<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>


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