Dear Hector and colleagues,
I have found very interesting your message. It has reminded me in
another level the problems we have in this list to keep focused
discussions particularly regarding disciplinary (non philosophical, non
general) matters. Most people in the list pay lip tribute to
multidisciplinarity concerning the problem of establishing the
foundations of information science. But in actuality only the
"generalist" community including philosophers and people close to
information theory have sufficient critical mass to voluntarily or
involuntarily bias the debate towards their views, specially the
preoccupation for these big questions that (fortunately) at the time
being can not be answered.
In my particular stance, already commented upon in my last message, and
in quite a few previous ones, the most strategic problem relates to the
biological origins of meaning, that hiatus that notoriously separates
the inanimate/objective from the animate/subjective forms of
information. The recent revolution in signaling science has a few things
to say about that, how life cycles are advanced among constellations of
colligated info&energy flows and how the meaning of signals is
molecularly fabricated, not so far away from our social "narratives".
But helas I have failed to capture the attention and interest of my FIS
colleagues --a complain, to myself, which is widely shared among most,
if not all of us!! In any case I omit self-propaganda of my papers on
the matter.
Please, do not take that as a manifestation of bitterness. The fact is
that we have a serious imbalance in the composition of our discussion
community. In part, enlisting practicing research scientists in a
generalist list like this one is very difficult. And maintaining topical
discussions on their specialized matters of interest is almost
impossible given the lack of critical mass, and the disinterest of broad
segments of the list. See for instance the poor performance of most
specialized sessions organized so far. Spontaneous "tangents" come to
the rescue, as they have always been accepted in this list, and can be
genuinely creative, but most of the derivations go again and again to
those ghostly questions.
Now, going to the positive part, I have recently proposed to the board
of IS4SI, the common info society into which FIS integrated, the
arrangement of Working Groups, or Interest Groups, so that maintaining a
general discussion list be compatible with parallel exchanges among more
homogeneous participants. For instance, here at FIS it wouldn't be too
difficult arranging a working group on info philosophy and another on
info theory and the definition of information (the quest for
establishing standards); and perhaps we could try one in biophysics and
neurodynamics, and another group in bioinformation, plus social info
matters... Who knows? I think it is an interesting step to try in order
to achieve some "ratchet effect", and we could count with fis' own web
pages to support the new works, and perhaps it would be easier to get
some financing for small meetings face to face... Well, I offer myself
to start working with the bioinfo club, and if anyone is interested in
the initial coordination of one of these possible teams, just speak up
(either in the list or offline). If any of these could work a little
among us, we would have made advancements to arrange the idea in wider
scale.
Best wishes--Pedro
El 30/03/2017 a las 22:01, Terrence W. DEACON escribió:
Dear Hector,
Whenever I read an email or hear a response that begins with the
phrase "With all due respect" I fear that what follows will indeed be
disrespectful and self-promoting. Scholarly respect is particularly
important when the diversity of backgrounds of the contributors is so
broad and their level of erudition in these different fields is
likewise broad. Best to begin with the assumption that all are
well-read expert scholars rather than complaining about others'
ignorance of what you refer to—an assumption that is often mistaken.
In our short email notes one cannot expect each author to provide a
list of all current mathematical and non-mathematical formal
definitions of information, or to provide an evidentiary list of their
own papers on the topic as a proof of competence, in order to make a
point. Since we are inevitably forced to use short-hand terms to
qualify our particular usages, my only suggestion is that we need to
find mutially understandable qualifiers for these different uses, to
avoid pointless bickering about what 'information' is or how it should
be used.
The term "information" is not "fixed" to a particular technical
definition currently standard to only one or two fields like
mathematics, physics, or computation theory. Nor can we assume that
technical approaches in one field will be relevant to problems outside
that field. I would hope that we are collectively attempting to expand
our mutual understanding of this concept, recognizing its diversity,
and the value of the many very different approaches in different
fields. I would like us to stop making claims that one or another
approach has exclusive priority and remain open to dialogue and
constructive argument. So although we should credit Wiener, Fano,
Solomonoff, Kolmogorov, Chaitin, Bennett, Landauer, and many many
others with greatly extending the field beyond Shannon's initial
contribution, even a full bibliography of mathematical and physical
contributions to the understanding of this concept would only scratch
the surface. Information concepts are critical to molecular and
evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, semiotics and
linguistics, and social theory—to name but a few more divergent
fields. Each of these fields has their own list of luminaries and
important discoveries.
The challenge is always to find a common set of terms and assumptions
to ground such ambitious multidisciplinary explorations.
To those who are convinced that the past 65 years of research HAS
dealt with all the relevant issues I beg your patience with those of
us who remain less convinced.
— Terry
On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 11:12 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za
<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
Dear Hector,
Personally I agree that algorithmic information theory and the
related concepts of randomness and Bennett’s logical depth are the
best way to go. I have used them in many of my own works. When I
met Chaitin a few years back we talked mostly about how
unrewarding and controversial our work on information theory has
been. When I did an article on information for the Stanford
Encyclopaedia of Philosophy it was rejected in part becausewe of
fierce divisions between supporters of Chaitin and supporters of
Kolmogorov! The stuff I put in on Spencer Brown was criticized
because “he was some sort of Buddhist, wasn’t he?” It sounds like
you have run into similar problems.
That is why I suggested a realignment of what this group should be
aiming for. I think the end result would justify our thinking, and
your work certainly furthers it. But it does need to be worked
out. Personally, I don’t have the patience for it.
John Collier
Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
*From:*Hector Zenil [mailto:hzen...@gmail.com
<mailto:hzen...@gmail.com>]
*Sent:* Thursday, 30 March 2017 10:48 AM
*To:* John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za
<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>>; fis <fis@listas.unizar.es
<mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es>>
*Subject:* Re: [Fis] Causation is transfer of information
Dear John et al. Some comments below:
On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 9:47 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za
<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
I think we should try to categorize and relate information
concepts rather than trying to decide which is the “right
one”. I have tried to do this by looking at various uses of
information in science, and argue that the main uses show
progressive containment: Kinds of Information in Scientific
Use
<http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/278/269>.
2011. cognition, communication, co-operation. Vol 9, No 2
<http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/22>
There are various mathematical formulations of information as
well, and I think the same strategy is required here.
Sometimes they are equivalent, sometimes close to equivalent,
and sometimes quite different in form and motivation. Work on
the foundations of information science needs to make these
relations clear. A few years back (more than a decade) a
mathematician on a list (newsgroup) argued that there were
dozens of different mathematical definitions of information. I
thought this was a bit excessive, and argued with him about
convergences, but he was right that they were mathematically
different. We need to look at information theory structures
and their models to see where they are equivalent and where
(and if) they overlap. Different mathematical forms can have
models in common, sometimes all of them.
The agreement among professional mathematicians is that the
correct definition of randomness as opposed to information is the
Martin Loef definition for the infinite asymptotic case, and
Kolmogorov-Chaitin for the finite case. Algorithmic probability
(Solomonoff, Levin) is the theory of optimal induction and thus
provides a formal universal meaning to the value of information.
Then the general agreement is also that Bennett's logical depth
separates the concept of randomness from information structure. No
much controversy in in there on the nature of classical
information as algorithmic information. Notice that 'algorithmic
information' is not just one more definiton of information, IS the
definition of mathematical information (again, by way of defining
algorithmic randomness). So adding 'algorithmic' to information is
not to talk about a special case that can then be ignored by
philosophy of information.
All the above builds on (and well beyond) Shannon Entropy, which
is not even very properly discussed in philosophy of information
beyond its most basic definition (we rarely, if ever, see
discussions around mutual information, conditional information,
Judea Pearl's interventionist approach and counterfactuals, etc),
let alone anything of the more advanced areas mentioned above, or
a discussion on the now well established area of quantum
information that is also comletely ignored.
This is like trying to do philosophy of cosmology discussing Gamow
and Hubble but ignoring relativity, or trying to do philosophy of
language today discussing Locke and Hume but not Chomsky, or doing
philosophy of mind discussing the findings of Ramon y Cajal and
claiming that his theories are not enough to explain the brain. It
is some sort of strawman fallacy contructing an opponent living in
the 40s to claim in 2017 that it fails at explaining everything
about information. Shannon Entropy is a counting-symbol function,
with interesting applications, Shannon himself knew it. It makes
no sense to expect a counting-symbol function to tell anything
interesting about information after 60 years. I refer again to my
Entropy deceiving paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05972
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05972>
I do not blame philosophers on this one, phycisists seem to assign
Shannon Entropy some mystical power, this is why I wrote a paper
proving how it cannot be used in graph complexity as some phycists
have recently suggested (e.g. Bianconi via Barabasi). But this is
the kind of discussion that we should have having, telling
phycisists not to go back to the 40s when it comes to
characterizing new objects. If Shannon Entropy fails at
characterizing sequences it will not work for other objects (graphs!).
I think the field of philosophy of information cannot get serious
until serious discussion on topics above starts to take place.
Right now the field is small and carried out by a few
mathematicians and phycisists. Philosophers are left behind
because they are choosing to ignore all the theory developed in
the last 50 to 60 years. I hope this is taken constructively. I
think we philosophers need to step up, if we are not be leading
the discussion at least we should not be 50 or 60 years behind. I
have tried to to close that gap but usually I also get convenently
ignored =)
I have argued that information originates in symmetry breaking
(making a difference, if you like, but I see it as a dynamic
process rather than merely as a representation) Information
Originates in Symmetry Breaking
<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/infsym.pdf> (/Symmetry/ 1996).
Very nice paper. I agree on symmetry breaking, I have similar ideas:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1572 <https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1572>
(published in the journal of Natural Computing)
On how symmetric rules can produce assymetric information.
Best,
Hector Zenil
http://www.hectorzenil.net/
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
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