Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Koichiro Matsuno]

On 27 Oct 2017 at 3:09 AM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

 

the cogitatum which transcends us is intersubjectivity. It is not physical. The 
physical is res extensa, whereas this remains res cogitans.

 

   Loet, let me hope this will not merely be a quibble about the terms. We may 
say that the physical is for res extensa in classical physics. However, we are 
not sure whether the same would apply to quantum physics supporting the 
infrastructure of our material world. Some philosophers sympathetic to quantum 
physics are in favor of contrasting res potentia a la Werner Heisenberg with 
res extensa. Once we are determined to face res potentia, that is for those 
individuals as the concrete vehicles carrying uncountable counter-factual 
conditionals. Thus, the inter-individual relationship mediated by emitting and 
absorbing the quantum particles, whether big or small, is in charge of 
revealing the factual conditionals through the measurement internal to the 
participating individuals. One advantage of focusing on internal measurement 
may be the likelihood for approaching persistence or duration as the quality 
directly retrievable from the underlying individual events. The additional 
ontological commitment required here is kept to a bare minimum such as allowing 
for res potentia for the individuals.  

 

Koichiro Matsuno

 

 

 

From: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 3:09 AM
To: Terrence W. DEACON <dea...@berkeley.edu>; Foundation of Information Science 
<fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

 

Dear Terry and colleagues, 

 

(...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to establish 
these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological grounding where the 
grounded normative relation is the preservation of the systemic physical 
properties that produce the norm-preserving dynamic. 

I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, whereas I 
agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human beings, this 
grounding of subjective normativity can be found in intersubjectivity. Whereas 
the subjective remains cogitans (in doubt), the intersubjective can be 
considered as cogitatum (the thing about which one remains in doubt). 

 

For Descartes this cogitatum is the Other of the Cogito. The Cogito knows 
itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished from what transcends it, the 
Transcendental or, in Descartes' terminology, God. (This is the ontological 
proof of God's presence. Kant showed that this proof does not hold: God cannot 
be proven to exist.) Husserl (1929) steps in on this point in the Cartesian 
Meditations: the cogitatum which transcends us is intersubjectivity. It is not 
physical. The physical is res extensa, whereas this remains res cogitans. It 
cannot be retrieved, but one has reflexive access to it.

 

Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. The 
intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) communication. The codes 
in the communication can relatively be stabilized. One can use the metaphor of 
eigenvectors of a communication matrix. They remain our constructs, but they 
guide the communication. (Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a 
misunderstanding.) Using Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of the codes 
of communication, one can continue this metaphor and consider other than the 
first eigenvector as "functional differentiations" which enable the 
communication to process more complexity. The model is derived from the Trias 
Politica: problems can be solved in one of the branches or the other. The 
normativity of the judiciary is different from the normativity of the 
legislative branch, but they both ground the normativity that guides us.

 

The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly communication 
about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication is different from, for 
example, political communication. An agent ("consciousness" in Luhmann's 
terminology) recombines reflexively and has to integrate because of one's 
contingency. The transcendental grounding is in the communication; it remains 
uncertain. Fortunately, because this implies that it can be reconstructed (by 
us albeit not as individuals). 

 

A non-human does not know oneself to be contingent. Lots of things follow from 
this; for example, that the non-human does not have access to our 
intersubjectivity as systems of expectations.

 

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

Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Loet and colleagues,

One of the advantages of a new discipline is the simplification of 
discourse, the creation of a new space where you can easily build new 
knowledge without copious management of other unnecessary, 
circumstantial ideas. I have already quoted in this list the famous 
quotation by Whitehead about the "mental liberation" in arithmetic that 
implied the use of zero. Something similar may happen nowadays 
concerning the wide reaching domains of information. But I see two 
problems about delineating the "information zero".
One, that life is not incorporated yet as the starting point of 
communication (I do not mean "biology"--rather it is each one's 
biography, historically and evolutionarily augmented/contemplated). At 
the end, every living agent "communicates" with other living agents, and 
the available tools to do that are signals that mean "portions" of its 
own life-cycle. We humans have shared sensorimotor tools that provide 
the common ground for our communication, for exporting those missing 
portions or needs in our lives. Formalizing the life cycle is quite 
problematic, however.
And the second "zero" concerns the need to constitute a new 
informational observer, endowed with the general mental characteristics 
required for information science. The observer of physics, chemistry, 
etc., is well equipped and we assume that his/her mind is properly 
"charged" with the corresponding principles, theories, experiences, etc. 
But in the case of info science, the topic matter is open-ended. What is 
the "charge" of this new observer? Depending on our specializations, we 
equip this observer with our preferred approach; so our unending back 
and forth. But many other knowledge bodies (or at least the 4-5 basic 
disciplines that Xueshan was commenting) may be needed to make sense of 
that particular informational/communicational phenomenon in cells, 
organisms, people, disciplines, enterprises, countries... If we accept 
this "ecumenical" contemplation of information science, how can that 
multi-observer be viable at all? Our cognitive limitations are so 
obvious... An elementary provisional solution (a pre-zero, a pre-science 
tool) for making it possible was suggested in those ten principles weeks 
ago.
In any case, I think these two absences or "zeroes" might be 
successfully filled in, without having to wait for too long.


Best wishes--Pedro

El 26/10/2017 a las 20:08, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:

Dear Terry and colleagues,

(...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to 
establish these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological 
grounding where the grounded normative relation is the preservation 
of the systemic physical properties that produce the norm-preserving 
dynamic.
I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, 
whereas I agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human 
beings, this grounding of subjective normativity can be found in 
intersubjectivity. Whereas the subjective remains/cogitans/ (in 
doubt), the intersubjective can be considered as/cogitatum/ (the thing 
about which one remains in doubt).


For Descartes this/cogitatum/ is the Other of the/Cogito./ 
The/Cogito/ knows itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished 
from what transcends it, the Transcendental or, in Descartes' 
terminology, God. (This is the ontological proof of God's presence. 
Kant showed that this proof does not hold: God cannot be proven to 
exist.) Husserl (1929) steps in on this point in the/Cartesian 
Meditations/: the/cogitatum/ which transcends us is intersubjectivity. 
It is not physical. The physical is/res extensa/, whereas this 
remains/res cogitans./ It cannot be retrieved, but one has reflexive 
access to it.


Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. 
The intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) 
communication. The codes in the communication can relatively be 
stabilized. One can use the metaphor of eigenvectors of a 
communication matrix. They remain our constructs, but they guide the 
communication. (Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a 
misunderstanding.) Using Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of 
the codes of communication, one can continue this metaphor and 
consider other than the first eigenvector as "functional 
differentiations" which enable the communication to process more 
complexity. The model is derived from the /Trias Politica/: problems 
can be solved in one of the branches or the other. The normativity of 
the judiciary is different from the normativity of the legislative 
branch, but they both ground the normativity that guides us.


The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly 
communication about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication 
is different from, for example, political communication. An agent 
("consciousness" in Luhmann's terminology) recombines reflexively and 
has to integrate because of 

Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Terry and colleagues,

(...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to 
establish these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological 
grounding where the grounded normative relation is the preservation of 
the systemic physical properties that produce the norm-preserving 
dynamic.
I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, 
whereas I agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human 
beings, this grounding of subjective normativity can be found in 
intersubjectivity. Whereas the subjective remains cogitans (in doubt), 
the intersubjective can be considered as cogitatum (the thing about 
which one remains in doubt).


For Descartes this cogitatum is the Other of the Cogito. The Cogito 
knows itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished from what 
transcends it, the Transcendental or, in Descartes' terminology, God. 
(This is the ontological proof of God's presence. Kant showed that this 
proof does not hold: God cannot be proven to exist.) Husserl (1929) 
steps in on this point in the Cartesian Meditations: the cogitatum which 
transcends us is intersubjectivity. It is not physical. The physical is 
res extensa, whereas this remains res cogitans. It cannot be retrieved, 
but one has reflexive access to it.


Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. 
The intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) 
communication. The codes in the communication can relatively be 
stabilized. One can use the metaphor of eigenvectors of a communication 
matrix. They remain our constructs, but they guide the communication. 
(Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a misunderstanding.) Using 
Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of the codes of communication, 
one can continue this metaphor and consider other than the first 
eigenvector as "functional differentiations" which enable the 
communication to process more complexity. The model is derived from the 
Trias Politica: problems can be solved in one of the branches or the 
other. The normativity of the judiciary is different from the 
normativity of the legislative branch, but they both ground the 
normativity that guides us.


The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly 
communication about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication 
is different from, for example, political communication. An agent 
("consciousness" in Luhmann's terminology) recombines reflexively and 
has to integrate because of one's contingency. The transcendental 
grounding is in the communication; it remains uncertain. Fortunately, 
because this implies that it can be reconstructed (by us albeit not as 
individuals).


A non-human does not know oneself to be contingent. Lots of things 
follow from this; for example, that the non-human does not have access 
to our intersubjectivity as systems of expectations.


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, University of 
Sussex;


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


Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck , University of London;

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





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Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Louis H Kauffman]

Dear Terrence,
Condsider the Russell paradox. 
Russell set is R = { x a set | x is not a member of itself}.

If instead we define

R = { x a set | x is not a member of itself, and x is defined PRIOR TO THE 
APPLICATION OF THIS  DEFINITION}

then R is not a member of itself since it occurs AFTER the definition. 

The definition itself provides a definition of before and after like the mirror 
in the Barber resolution.

Of course for this temporal interpretation, a new NOW comes into play every 
time the definition is activated. 
Activation can be done by any cognizer of the definition.
Or it can be formalized by R_{t+1} = {x| x is a set that has been defined by 
time t}.
Then we could have
R_{0} = { }
R_{1} = { R_{0} } = { { } }
R_{3} = {R_{0}}, R_{1}} = {{}, {{}} }
…
For mathematical purposes the … can continue transfinitely to as high an 
ordinal as one wants.

The analogy with the mirror is the cut between BEFORE and AFTER.
Note that the definition 
 R = { x a set | x is not a member of itself, and x is defined PRIOR TO THE 
APPLICATION OF THIS  DEFINITION}
is still self-referential. 
It is the temporal unfolding of this self-reference that leads to the 
temporality in the sense of successive times.

Best,
Lou Kauffman
P.S. I think this uses up my quota of responses for this week.

> On Oct 25, 2017, at 2:13 PM, Terrence W. DEACON  > wrote:
> 
> Adding a temporal dimension has often been offered as a way out of paradox in 
> quasi-physical terms. This is because interpreting paradoxical logical 
> relations or calculating their values generally produces interminably 
> iterating self-contradicting or self-undermining results. Writers from G. S. 
> Brown to Gregory Bateson (among others) have pointed out that one can resolve 
> this in *process* terms (rather than assuming undecidable values) by focusing 
> on this incessant oscillation itself (i.e. a meta-analysis that recognizes 
> that the process of operating on these relations cannot be neglected).Using 
> this meta-analysis one can take advantage of the dynamic that calculation or 
> intepretation entails. It is also, of course, the way we make use of 
> so-called imaginary values in mathematics, whose iteratively calculated 
> results incessantly reverse sign from negative to positive. By simply 
> accepting this fact as given and marking it with a distinctive token (e.g. 
> "i" ) effectively generates an additional dimension that is useful in a wide 
> range of applications from fourier to quantum analyses. So my question is 
> whether using this mirror metaphor can be seen as a variant on this general 
> approach. It also resonates with efforts to understand the interpretation of 
> information in related terms (e.g. using complex numbers).
> 
> — Terry
> 
> PS A bit of reflection (no pun intended) also suggests that it is also 
> relevant to our discussions about agency (which like the concept of 
> "information" must be understood at different levels that need to be 
> distinguished because they can easily be confused). My earlier point about 
> the normative aspect of agency (and consistent with the previously posted URL 
> to the paper by Barandiaran et al.) is that this implies the need for 
> incessant contrary work to negate perturbation away from some "preferred" 
> value or state. Although there can be many levels of displaced agency in both 
> natural and artificial agents (like cybernetic systems such as thermostats 
> and many biological regulative subsystems), there cannot be interminable 
> regress of this displacement to establish these norms. At some point 
> normativity requires ontological grounding where the grounded normative 
> relation is the preservation of the systemic physical properties that produce 
> the norm-preserving dynamic. This is paradoxically circular—a "strang loop" 
> in Hofstadter's lingo. This avoids vicious regress as well avoiding assuming 
> a cryptic "observer perspective." But it therefore requires that we treat 
> different levels and degrees of "normative displacement" differently from one 
> another. This both echoes Loet's point that we should not expect a single 
> concept of agency, but it alternatively suggest that we may be able to 
> construct a nested hierarchy of agency concepts (as Stan might suggest). So I 
> glimpse that a set of parallel and converging views may underlie these 
> superficially different domains of debate.
> 
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 2:45 AM, Krassimir Markov  > wrote:
> Dear Lou, Bruno, and FIS Colleagues,
> 
> Thank you for nice and polite comments to my post about “Barber paradox”.
> 
> First of all, the main idea of the post was not to solve any paradox but
> to point two very important operations of Infos:
> - Direct reflection;
> - Transitive (indirect) reflection.
> There are no other ways for Infos to collect data from environment.
> 
> Second, the example with 

Re: [Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Terrence W. DEACON]

Adding a temporal dimension has often been offered as a way out of paradox
in quasi-physical terms. This is because interpreting paradoxical logical
relations or calculating their values generally produces interminably
iterating self-contradicting or self-undermining results. Writers from G.
S. Brown to Gregory Bateson (among others) have pointed out that one can
resolve this in *process* terms (rather than assuming undecidable values)
by focusing on this incessant oscillation itself (i.e. a meta-analysis that
recognizes that the process of operating on these relations cannot be
neglected).Using this meta-analysis one can take advantage of the dynamic
that calculation or intepretation entails. It is also, of course, the way
we make use of so-called imaginary values in mathematics, whose iteratively
calculated results incessantly reverse sign from negative to positive. By
simply accepting this fact as given and marking it with a distinctive token
(e.g. "*i*" ) effectively generates an additional dimension that is useful
in a wide range of applications from fourier to quantum analyses. So my
question is whether using this mirror metaphor can be seen as a variant on
this general approach. It also resonates with efforts to understand the
interpretation of information in related terms (e.g. using complex numbers).

— Terry

PS A bit of reflection (no pun intended) also suggests that it is also
relevant to our discussions about agency (which like the concept of
"information" must be understood at different levels that need to be
distinguished because they can easily be confused). My earlier point about
the normative aspect of agency (and consistent with the previously posted
URL to the paper by Barandiaran et al.) is that this implies the need for
incessant contrary work to negate perturbation away from some "preferred"
value or state. Although there can be many levels of displaced agency in
both natural and artificial agents (like cybernetic systems such as
thermostats and many biological regulative subsystems), there cannot be
interminable regress of this displacement to establish these norms. At some
point normativity requires ontological grounding where the grounded
normative relation is the preservation of the systemic physical properties
that produce the norm-preserving dynamic. This is paradoxically circular—a
"strang loop" in Hofstadter's lingo. This avoids vicious regress as well
avoiding assuming a cryptic "observer perspective." But it therefore
requires that we treat different levels and degrees of "normative
displacement" differently from one another. This both echoes Loet's point
that we should not expect a single concept of agency, but it alternatively
suggest that we may be able to construct a nested hierarchy of agency
concepts (as Stan might suggest). So I glimpse that a set of parallel and
converging views may underlie these superficially different domains of
debate.

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 2:45 AM, Krassimir Markov  wrote:

> Dear Lou, Bruno, and FIS Colleagues,
>
> Thank you for nice and polite comments to my post about “Barber paradox”.
>
> First of all, the main idea of the post was not to solve any paradox but
> to point two very important operations of Infos:
> - Direct reflection;
> - Transitive (indirect) reflection.
> There are no other ways for Infos to collect data from environment.
>
> Second, the example with paradox had shown the well known creative
> approach in the modeling - adding new dimensions in the model could help
> to better understand the modeling object or process. For instance:
>
> If our linear model contains a “paradox” point  “X”:
>
> //X//
>
> by adding a new second dimension it may be explained and the paradox would
> be solved:
>
>   \
> /
> -
> //X//
>
>
> Friendly greetings
> Krassimir
>
>
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>



-- 
Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
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