Re: Information and Natural Languages

From: Rafael Capurro, Professor <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 17 Dec 1997 - 16:23:26 CET

Dear Koichiro,

sorry for the delay. I will be on vacations the next weeks but I
wanted to make some comments on your ideas concerning the
relationship between time and information. I had yesterday an
interesting talk on this matter with my colleague Wolfgang von Keitz.
I give you shortly some of the results:
1) If we are observing soemething that is growing very very slowly (or even
stable: a fossile) with regard to my lifetime then I can disregard my
lifetime and we get something like an objective (Newton) time (I can
use for instance the perfect tense) (frozen time).The quality of my
prognose is good. At the other end of the scale I have propositions
being done in the present tense, where there is almost no possibility
of prognostic. This is the case of, for instance, historical
propositions and, indeed, of human sciences. Things are changing
continuously and we get something like a quasi-sychronicity. No
objectivity is possible. The amout of possible errors (concerning the
prognostic) is BIG :-)
2) But if Newton-Time is only a fiction, and if not only human and
life sciences but even (Quantum) Physics is aware of the relativity
of the time parameter then I get that truth is time dependent and
information also. Time must be constructed. This is an obvious case
when we deal with phenomena where time is an essential component. But
the aim of classical (Newton) science was finally to avoid (or
disregard) time. If you discard time, then the quality of your prognose
is very good!
3) What about introducing causes in time (during the processes)? Does
it make possible a better prognose? This is the point where I see the
concept of information understood as the _causa formalis_. I think
that modern science disregard this sort of causality taking into
account only the _causa efficiens_ . The _causa formalis_ allows only a relative
prognose, as I do not know exactly what the effect of the
'in-formation' processes will be.
4) Due to this situation and if we do not take the elimination of time
but time-phenoma as a basis for observation then we have to be aware
that with new qualitative forms (or in-formations) also the kind of
form (or informations) varies.
5) Ancient Greek philosophy (Plato, Aristotle) considered forms
(eidos, idea) as the culmination (or realization, _energeia_) of
potential being (_dynamis_). The question is, as Heidegger in _Being
and Time_ states, whether potentiality is 'higher' than actuality. In
this case forms or not a culmination but a kind of horizon of
possible developments (not just, as Plato thought, a copy of an
eternal original).
6) When you then ask for the possibility of translating present tense
observations (local time) to a kind of observations that allow a more
secure prognose, then we have, I think, different possibilities:
- either we work with _ceteris paribus_ clauses
- or we take into account the _causa formalis_ and can do only a very
defficient prognose (take, for instance, economics!)
- or, in case we are at the human level, we have to take into
explicit accout the way(s) we construct time, i.e. our being aware of
the difference between past, present and future and of the influence
of the timely (!) observer on his/her observations (see Quantum
Physics).
7) In _Being and Time_ Heidegger considers the 'turning over'
(_Umschlag_) from the practical being in the world to the theoretical
one. I think that this can help (me) to clarify your question. The
practical is not opposed to the theoretical, but it is included,
althoug in a non-thematical way, in it. In a similar way we could say
that the 'turning over' into an objective (time disregarding) view of
the phenonema comes out of a previous time-related description.
Winograd and Flores have made useful this distinction with regard to
the way a computer scientist looks at a software (the objective view)
and the way a user views the software (the practical view).
8) Finally I will like to remember that the human observer is an
observer capable of language. I think this is a v e r y basic
distinction with regard to all other kinds of observers. Language
allows us (among others) to see things under different perspectives
_as such and such_. This _seeing as_ was a basic discovery of Greek
philosophy (Aristotle's _on he on_= being as being). Although we have
tried to fix the _as_ for instance in Kant's transcendental subject,
we see now, under an evolutionary perspective, that there are no such
a priori structures and that 'forms' are perspectives of world
constructions (possibilities more than actualities).
9) My last point: If we learn to see evolution under the causation
through information then we get less a continuum than a discontinuum,
and it remains open to new 'fulgurations' (as Popper and K. Lorenz
call the new emergences). We loose some prognostic, but we come near
to how things (probably) happen.
At the human level this means that we orient our actions not only by
thinking a kind of objective time but by considering the right
moment, Greek _kairos_, and can 'explain' thus historical events by
reflecting on this. Not only _know yourself_ (_gnothi sauton_) but
also _kairon gnothi_ (know the right moment) was one of the famous
'dicta' of the 'seven wise men' in Greece.
Kind regards, sayonara
Rafael

Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 06:33:47 +0100 (MET)
Reply-to: fis@listas.unizar.es
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: Multiple recipients of list <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Subject: Re: Information and Natural Languages

   Rafael's concern

>trying to get
>more deeply in the understanding of your concern about the present
>tenseand the present progressive tense etc.

has actually straightened me up. Let me try to say what I want to
say in a plain language, though I don't know whether I could
succeed.

   My starting point is this: Any dynamic behavior in progress
is descriptively in the mode of the present progressive tense.
Dynamics starts from the present progressive, no matter how
awkward it may look.

   The second point is that the present progressive tense can
allow behavioral agents other than the author who decribes it.
Imagine, for instance, I am walking through a crowd as avoiding
collisions with other people. Then, I can see that other people
are doing the same. That is, I am walking through the crowd as
collisions with other people being avoided. The statement of
my waliking in the present progressive tense makes others beside
myself active agents, also. Of course, they are active observers.

   The third is that if we still adhere to the practice of
describing any dynamics in the present tense, it will be
required for us to construct a bridge between the present
progressive and the present tense. One candidate for this is
via the present perfect tense. If the presence of globally
perfected movement is guaranteed, global synchronous time as an
attribute of the presence can serve as a reference against which
statements in the present tense are made possible. Such a
global synchronous time can have a static attribute and can be
parameterized accordingly. When I talked about the presence of
perfected movement in the above, a hockey puck sliding on an ice
rink almost frictionlessly was in mind.

   One more candidate approaching the present tense is via the
past progressive tense. Since the past progressive tense can
already be in the record, it has to satisfy the principle of the
excluded middle. What is needed for the transference from the
past progressive to the present tense is the presence of the
activity for fulfilling the principle. When I was walking
through the crowd as avoiding collisions with other people,
the avoiding activity has successfully been conducted up to the
point the record has been registered, though the walking has not
yet been perfected. My walking yet to come is going to avoid
collisions with other people, since walking and colliding exclude
each other. Local time associated with the presence of the local
activity for fulfilling the principle of the excluded middle is
definitely involved in the synchronization with other local time
in the nehborhood because the principle extends towards the entire
discourse. But, no global synchronous time is available. What is
possible instead is a delayed or skewed scynchronization at best,
the latter of which is quite difficult to be decipered in terms of
global synchronous time.

   This has been a rough sketch I have now. What concerns me is
the relationship between the issue of information and local time
as a local activity based upon the grammatology of our ordinary
languages. How about that?

   Regards,
   Koichiro

     Koichiro Matsuno
Received on Wed Dec 17 16:46:32 1997

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