Re:

Allan,

There are a number of ways we could approach the unification of the posited
three aspects (constitutive, generative, communicational) of information.
When I last struggled with this question, the most fruitful approach seemed to
be to consider the entailment relationship between (among) the different
aspects. As is often the case, when one tries to do this, one tends to come
up with different entailment relationships depending upon the ontological
assumptions that one is willing to make.

My ontological stance was based on my interpretation of the work of George
Kampis and Robert Rosen. This led to the generative (referential, or active)
aspect being able to entail the others, not the other way around. The
constitutive aspect turned out to have the least entailment reach.

An empiricist stance might well lead to the communicational aspect entailing
the others. A traditional reductionist view would probably find the three in
mutual entailment with any communicational discrepancies attributed to
randomness or error. It would be interesting to work out the entailment
relationships from each of the perspectives that have commanded attention in
the history of western, and not-so-western thought. We might be able to
rescue the "sciences" of complexity by working in this direction; or at least
shed some light on why it is so difficult for us to agree on what information
is.

Bela

ps...I copied this note to George Kampis and Don Mikulecky....with the hope
that they may be able to join the discussion when discretionary time becomes
available.

Allan L Combs wrote:

> >To Pedro Marijun, Do you think these three info aspects you mention
> >(constitutive, generative, comunicational) could be lumped together in a
> >unified brain info theory, as you seem to suggest implicitly in another
> >message?
>
> This is a fundamental question, on related to the earlier query regarding
> the role of representation in the brain. Is neural activity in the brain
> constitutive (e.g., comprising some kind of informational structure),
> generative (e.g., generating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in a
> fashion best understood as an unfolding creative process), or
> communicational (e.g., the basis conversations between nerve cells, as
> suggested in traditional texts)?
>
> Allan Combs
Received on Tue Apr 25 11:27:16 2000