Comment, question and request

Dear FIS-ers:

I have not been very active sending in comments, because I felt that 90%
of the discussion has been dealing with philosophical questions, and
references to Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Kant, Peirce, etc., with which
I (a culturally challenged 20/21st_century space physicist,
psychoacoustician and organist) am utterly unfamiliar. But before going
back home to Alaska, I want to send in a comment with a question and a
request.

I refer to James Barham's last entry of today, particularly the second
paragraph that begins with:

>I have argued that the correct way to look at information is as an
>element in a special sort of dynamical interaction...

My question to everybody is: What is wrong with any or all of the
statements copied below from my FIS paper (Section 2 of "On the Concept of
information.)? Would you please briefly tell me? (If you prefer, you may
send your comments to me directly to <jgr@gi.alaska.edu>). Depending on
the answers I get, I will or will not submit this paper to Entropy. THANK
YOU for any "pre-review"!

"...We say that a (complex) system A is in information-based interaction
with a (complex) system B if the configuration of A, or, more precisely,
the presence of a certain spatial or temporal feature in system A causes a
specific alteration in the structure of system B, with a final state that
depends ONLY on whether that particular feature is present in A. ... (I)n
an information-based interaction a one-to-one correspondence is
established between a spatial or temporal feature or pattern in system A
and a specific change triggered in B; this correspondence depends only on
the pattern in question, being independent of other circumstances. ...
While in basic physical interactions there is an energy flow between the
interacting bodies or to and from the interaction mechanism, in
information-based interactions any energy required for the participating
(but not controlling) physical processes must be provided (or absorbed) by
a reservoir external to the interaction process. ... (I)nformation-based
interactions are usually "discontinuous", in the sense that if the
original pattern at the source is modified in a steady, continuous way,
the response in the recipient may not vary at all in a continuous way.
.. Although we have been talking about information, we must now provide a
more formal definition: information is the agent that mediates the above
described correspondence--it is what links the particular features or
pattern in the source system A with the specific changes caused in the
structure of the recipient B. In other words, information represents and
defines the uniqueness of this correspondence; as such, it is an
irreducible entity (the footnote here says: Think of the "A-ness" conveyed
in visual interaction with the symbols a, A, alpha, aleph, or the
"three-ness" conveyed by any set containing three elements. Note a certain
analogy between our definition of information with Cantor's definition of
integer number: "that which all coordinable sets have in common"). ...
Note that in a natural system we cannot have "information alone", detached
from any interaction process past, present or future: information is
always there for a purpose. ... (T)his indeed is Kuepper's "pragmatic
information". ... Given a complex system, structural order alone does not
represent information-information appears only when structural order leads
to specific change elsewhere. ..."

_______________

Juan G. Roederer
c/o Director's Office
The Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Strada Costiera 11
34014 Trieste
Italy

Phone: +39 (040) 2240607
Received on Fri May 31 10:42:15 2002