Re: talking exactly about what we are talking about

Dear Karl,

>Dear Rafael, Karl, James, and All:
This is another long email addressing the views expressed in response to the potential for a grounding of information. This thread was motivated by Rafael suggestion that such a grounding within metaphysics may be possible. My previous post on this subject is appended at the end of this message if you would like to refresh your memories of the issues under discussion.
Rafael:
Your response was appreciated. You covered vast territories. From the engineering perspective of Shannon, which lies at the root of the current questions, it seems that an alternative route to a relation between metaphysics and information is conceivable. (Fortunately, the work, "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" is available on line so that we can read the same text. The address is: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html )>

thanks. What I think we should also bear in mind when reading
Shannon is his distinction between information and message.
As you well know, there is no transfer of information in Shannon's
view between a sender and a receiver, but in your words:

>1. An information source which produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal....>

Shannon's theory is (also) a theory of message communication that
is based, as you very clearly state, on a concept of information that
has (almost) nothing to do with the everyday use of this concept in
English. This everyday use is indeed, I believe, substituted within
this theory (but without any specific definition!) by the word *message*.
As in every theory, this one also rests upon presuppositions...
Information comes thus to mean the number of (dual) *decisions* out
of a source in order to create (better: to codify)... a message! What
is transmitted (and may be subject to *noise*) is the code, affecting
thus the interpretation (!) of the message. Within a theory of messages
(at the human level) we would say, that we get some information on the
basis of a delivered message. Or, conceptually speaking, that information
(in the ordinary sense of the word) presupposes (the bringing of a) message

A few day ago I was talking about this with a French biologist during
a conference on bioethics and as I asked him, how far biology now
uses concepts related to communication, message transmission etc.
he answered me that this terminology must be very much *refined* to
the cotext of, say, intereactions between cells (or within cells) for
instance concerning the difference between message/messenger or
the question of simultaneity of interactions. Not being a biologist, I
cannot help in this regard, but we may start an interdisciplinary
exchange. Of course, also at the human level the question *what
is a message* has been answered in different ways particularly
with regard to different *media revolutions* (writing, print, computing...).
So that we may have also different perspectives when considering
the question of how, for instance, cells exchange... no, not
information, but *messages* and how they *interpret* (or *select*)
a *form* out of a *message* (being thus *in-formed*)

By the way: thinking *messages* within the framework of Western
metaphysics would mean that there is something as the (finally)
*right* message to be *understood* in an *ideal* way (thus
*in-forming* the receiver with the eternal *form* or *idea*)
Within a Christian view there is an identity between *message*
and *messenger*, but in a paradoxical manner: it appears in
a *veiled* way...

kind regards

Rafael
Received on Sat Jun 15 14:41:23 2002