Re: neuro: and what else

Dear Pedro,

I have been a passive observer of this discussion, and will remain more or less so
until this semester is over. The ongoing discussion on info phyla is most
interesting and potentially fruitful. The constitutive, generative, and
communicational aspects capture the notion of information in an intuitively
satisfying, and complete way. I must review the discussion on this before
commenting in more detail, but a few observations come to mind.

A few years ago, following the work of Kampis, I struggled to partition information
into underlying fragments of cohesive (state-referential), active (referential), and
selective (non-referential) information. I could not come up with a conceptual
framework that was complete, and/or easy to relate-to. I think your terminology and
the subsequent discussion are succeeding in this.

Best wishes,

Bela

"Pedro C. Marijuan" wrote:

> >In 1988 I did a search on Biological Abstracts for information, entropy,
> >and information and entropy. I got several hundred for the first, about 70
> >for the second, and 40 or so for the combination. I looked at the abstracts,
> >and in all but two cases the use of "information" or "entropy" was gratuitous,
> >i.e., the abstract would not have lost any content had they been deleted.
>
> I find your search quite an interesting practical case. Did you prepare any
> type of publication about this?
>
> >
> >Things may have changed in more than 10 years, but I somehow doubt
> >it. The restriction of information to information processing, especially
> >by machines suggest use of the machines, but not in the theory. If it
> >is theoretical, I agree the tendency is disturbing. It tends towards mechanical
> >models.
>
> Maybe this is the inevitable unidimensional thought that accompanies most
> of specialized research (decades ago, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote
> a pretty nice essay about "the barbarism of specialization"). However,
> reminding the discussion on INFO PHYLA, in the past June (it is in the fis
> web pages), I venture the following coment:
>
> The "mechanical" point of view may be partially correct, at least for
> capturing the CONSTITUTIVE aspects of info phenomena (say, the abstract
> "pattern"); but it completely disregards the GENERATIVE aspects (how that
> pattern is intertwined into a vast net of other interacting bodily
> processes, including hormones, peptides, emotions, time-rythms, etc.), and
> also it completely disregards the COMMUNICATIONAL aspects (that, for
> instance, Peter has cogently discussed in his "hermeneutical brain")...
>
> best
>
> Pedro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Pedro C. Marijuan. TEL 34 976 761 927, FAX 34 976 762 111
> BIOINFORMATION GROUP. Dept. Ingen. Electronica y Comunicaciones,
> CPS Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
> email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
> ------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Tue Apr 25 11:22:25 2000