Re: Biological information processing

 Dear colleagues,

 Before starting our discussions from the perspective of nervous systems I
would like to suggest that, in the measure that it is possible, we
consider not only the current aspect of interest (information and physics,
biological informmation processing, etc.) but also its relationship to the
previous ones. The notion of levels or degrees of organization (although
itself subject to debate) provides, in my opinion, a useful perspective
for the analysis information- and information processing-related issues.

 Some of these issues have already been the focus of some discussions. I
find, for example, that of the relationship (and communication) between
levels of organization especially important. In this respect, I would
insist in the crucial character of the relationship between the level at
which some kind of symbolic information processing first becomes apparent
and lower levels that provide at least part of the infrastructure for this
to happen.

 At the level of nervous systems and symbolic information processing,
Rafael Capurro's reference to information as "(following Weizsaecker and
others) not a quality of something but a quality of something with regard
to a (cognitive) structure" becomes, I think, especially relevant.

 Regards,

 Roberto R. Kampfner
Received on Wed Apr 8 19:04:48 1998